An Education
by Anne Hedonia
Summary: I went looking for a fic version of "Human Nature"/"Family of Blood" where Nine was John Smith and Rose was his companion, and which took place at Farringham.  Couldn't find one. Started writing. Simple as that. Rating ranges from PG-13 to Adult COMPLETE
1. Chapter 1

Rose Tyler thought, as she did every morning, that the back stairs of the Farrington School for Boys was a frankly rotten place to be carrying breakfast trays, and once again wished her destination was on the ground floor. And closer to the kitchen: her trip felt like it spanned the entire school. China and cutlery rattled and various liquids threatened to slop onto the pristine linen despite the fact they resided in containers specifically designed to avoid it. She'd tried various carrying techniques since her employment at the school and had found no solutions - if she walked as slowly as she apparently needed to keep it all steady the trip would take her an hour. She didn't know why she wasn't getting any better at this task and wondered for the millionth time what instinct proper maids had that she didn't. It just didn't seem like it should be so bloody hard.

Nevertheless, she was glad to have this particular delivery responsibility and not only would never have traded it, but would have fought to keep it if the need ever arose. The tray's intended recipient needed looking after, in her sole opinion, and she was determined to do so.

She grinned—not that anyone was likely to try and filch her post any time soon. The job of being Master John Smith's primary servant had fallen to her mostly because all the other maids were afraid of him. Rose was apparently the only one who never left his room feeling disregarded, disapproved of or having received an acid tongue-lashing that left her in tears. Rose always returned from doing chores for him in the same mood as when she left—occasionally her mood was even a little better. There were even stories of her having botched things while working for him and him not reprimanding her. One maid claimed to have seen Rose pick up some laundry from him while she was so busy talking she didn't notice she was leaving a trail of garments as she went. Mr. Smith allegedly mentioned it in mild exasperation – as though he were obliged to – but his smile as she left could only be described as fond.

On the surface, the phenomenon didn't make any sense to anyone else, seeing as Rose was generally the least skilled maid on staff and Mr. Smith was by far the pickiest customer, but there it was. Rose knew some of the older servants found her rapport with him unseemly. She'd heard whispers, caught looks. But the younger girls mostly regarded her with confusion and impressed amazement. A few of them nicknamed her The Lion Tamer.

Rose stubbed her toe on a rise in the hallway carpet and the tray lurched again, sending the lid of the sugar bowl bouncing along the floor. A lock of hair had fallen out of her little maid's cap and she blew it off her forehead: if only she were the Tray Tamer.

Rose could see how someone could be afraid of Mr. Smith, but…"seeing" was exactly the point - somehow she saw what the others didn't. To everyone else he was only the schoolmaster: the tall figure with the angular face and icy eyes, long legs carrying him through the halls briskly enough to make his black gown billow. They saw his quiet impatience with nonsense and tangents and took it for a lack of humour. They could sense a kind of coiled power about him, the air of a maelstrom that could be unleashed with the wrong word or gesture, and took it as sublimated anger at them. They knew his sharp eyes missed nothing, and felt his tight-lipped expressions were judgmental. The boys never failed to greet him in polite intimidation, and though he was cordial with the rest of the teachers and staff he was never overly familiar. To them this was just unfriendliness, smug superiority.

They all just watched his outer façade and never recognized it for what it was…a façade.

Rose could tell he wasn't relaxed enough to be himself. She watched him stride the halls and saw flashes of endearingly gangly legs and knobby hands amongst the folds of his gown. She saw the speed of his walk as an urgency to be in his classroom early and do his job in a way that would be respected. She saw his quiet impatience not with nonsense and tangents, but with his colleagues' petty, pompous attempts at impressing and jockeying for position. She knew the coiled power meant he had far more potential than he was using. She saw the fierce intelligence in his face as he observed every interaction and saw far past its surface, and a quiet loneliness that he somehow never assuaged by joining in. She saw the brief, kind smile that warmed his lips and eyes when an overly-nervous younger pupil seemed afraid of him; she also saw the quick moment between them as smile put the boy more at ease.

And speaking of smiles…

She thought of how his face changed whenever she entered his room during the day—of how the arctic blue in his eyes would undergo a thaw, gain the faintest twinkle and become something softer while the hint of a pleased smile dawned to match.

She thrilled at that phenomenon every time.

She arrived at his room, placing the tray on the little tray-holding table in the corridor and knocking firmly at his door. She waited the usual amount of time for him to call her in…but he didn't. She rapped again and heard a faint reply, or she heard words, anyway, spoken in what didn't sound like his usual voice. She put her ear to the door and heard it again—it made her uneasy. She opened his door a crack and peeked in.

She continued easing open the door until she found him, and then flushed through with a kind of guilty excitement: he was still in bed. Still asleep, actually, and having a restless time of it. She'd never seen the Master in such a personal, unguarded moment. She didn't think she should be watching, but couldn't look away.

His brow twitched and furrowed as grimaces crossed his face, and his one visible hand wrung the blankets. His limbs joined in the agitation, jerking his body once, then again. "Iss dangerous…" he muttered.

Rose watched, wide-eyed. She ventured a whisper: "Mr. Smith?"

His face grimaced more painfully. He kicked the covers partially off one leg. "Dangerous!"

Rose half-dropped the tray to the floor with a rude clank and hurried to his bedside, giving him a shake with both hands on his shoulders. "Mr. Smith!"

"AND MAUVE!" he cried, sitting up so fast Rose jumped back in alarm. He blinked in complete disorientation, his prominent features strangely slack, bleary blue eyes finally settling on her with no recognition in them.

Rose had abandoned all thoughts of propriety in her alarm, but now it all came back in a mortifying rush. Her employer was within arm's reach, in his bed, in pyjamas, looking like a lost little boy in the morning light. He seemed utterly vulnerable and without social armour – it felt like walking in on him being born.

His eyes started to focus on her. She didn't know what happened next, but didn't think it would be good, so she prepared to make the visit short. "Begging your pardon, sir," she said quickly. "You, you just—seemed to be having a nightmare and you worried me and, and so I woke you. I'll leave the tray where it is." She headed for the door.

"No..." came his voice, quiet and foggy. "You can stay and finish, it's all right." She turned and watched as he shuffled into his slippers and found his dressing gown. She hesitated, then quickly decided to take him at his word, stooping to grab the tray and hustle it to its usual table.

She set out the meal for him, brain working for a way to ask what he'd been dreaming about without overstepping her bounds. In the way of disenfranchised women dealing with men throughout history, she went about it left-handedly. "Have you been working especially hard, sir?" "You shouldn't let it disturb your rest if you have. You won't be any good to those boys if you get run down."

She snuck a look at him as he stood tying the belt of his robe. He was awake enough now to smile and roll his eyes a bit. "Thank you, Rose, I will take that under advisement."

She grinned to herself. Not in for a scolding after all, it seemed – she felt fluttery with relief, and a bit of pleasure. She arranged his cup and saucer, the sugar basin, the little milk jug. She unfolded the morning paper and set it out on the table, knowing he liked to look at it first. She glanced at the date: Monday 10th November, 1913.

He walked toward her, looking a little faraway. "As a matter of fact…" His eyes flashed to hers uncertainly. "I was having a dream."

Her face creased in sympathy, the better to hide concern. "Was it a very bad one?"

"No, actually…" He took the paper and glanced at it. "Not unpleasant at all. It was…" He smiled as though just realizing something for himself. "…rather entertaining."

Rose crooked an eyebrow that said she expected him to elaborate. John seemed to warm to his topic.

"Seems I was on some kind of…vessel that travelled through space, on my way to a crash landing somewhere." His smile went crooked, in a way Rose very much liked. "I was chasing something I apparently needed to intercept. Something troublesome."

"Oh, you were chasing Baines?" Rose's eyebrow arched higher as she arranged his knife and fork on either side of his plate.

Mr. Smith chuckled. "No, something more troublesome than him, if you can imagine."

"I can't," she said archly.

He graced her with an amused look that said "behave." She returned with a tilt of her head that said she wouldn't. The moment stretched a bit…till John looked pointedly at the tea pot on the table. Rose shook herself. "Oh, yes sir, of course." She began pouring. "Do you always have such fantastical dreams, sir?"

"Actually…I do," he confessed, with just the slightest sheepishness. "More often than not, anyway. I've had several dreams so far in which I'm this spaceman fellow, and I'm from the future, of all things. I travel about the galaxy in this ship, meddling in other people's business." He accepted his tea from Rose and took a sip, still lost in his thoughts. "And I'm not even human, can you believe that? Where does this sort of thing come from?"

"I suppose you must have a vivid imagination, sir."

He snorted softly, moving to his seat at the little table; Rose stepped aside. "I suppose I may have had, at some point, but that's long been left behind." He placed his napkin in his lap, settling himself. "Thank you, Rose," he said.

Rose privately deflated a little—she wasn't quite ready for her time with him to be over—but nodded and started for the door. She hesitated and looked back with her hand on the knob. "Um, sir?"

He raised his eyebrows at her expectantly, polite but not infinitely so. "Yes?"

"So…you are all right then, yes?"

There it was. The softening in his face. Rose felt a warm bloom of happiness – she wouldn't have to go without it this morning after all.

"Yes, Rose, I'm fine. Thank you for asking."

She nodded with a shy smile and exited.

Outside in the hall, the smile dropped a bit as the tension she'd felt caught up to her.

She strode down the corridor toward the stairs, thinking how hard it was wondering and watching every day, looking for any sign of a problem. The Doctor had said the Chameleon Arch would have no harmful side effects on him, but if his biology rewriting was anything like his navigating, she had reason to believe there might be surprises.


	2. Chapter 2

There was another problematic facet of the stairs of the Farringham as far as Rose was concerned: wooden banisters. Miles of them. And all those in "public" use were in need of constant polishing, according to her superiors. Settled on her knees in the hallway, she rubbed her rag against the beeswax in the little jar and applied it to yet another already-gleaming banister pole. She then turned to the previous pole and rubbed off the now-dry wax, applying pressure to create the shine. She thought her arms were going to fall off.

Banister polishing: not something one worried about much while growing up on a council estate. Other things generally not worried about in a place where everyone was the same level of broke and uneducated: behaving correctly in front of one's "superiors," proper bowing and scraping, hiding all opinions and keeping one's voice constantly below a murmur. And speaking of speaking, having to remember to say everything in an "old-fashioned" way was just exhausting. She _was_ getting more used to it after almost a month, but was still constantly afraid of saying something too modern or just plain bizarre and having someone realize...well, that she was a 21st century human helping to hide a biologically-rewritten alien. Right. Seemed ridiculous when she thought about it, but it still made her tense. She just tried to sound like a period programme off the telly and hoped she'd managed to watch the right things.

She heard a door open down the hall and saw the Doc—well, _Mr. Smith_ exit to the hall on his way to class. Really, she never knew what to call him anymore, not even to herself. He was so clearly a different man now, but still wearing the skin of the man she knew him to be. In her mind she bounced between the two titles constantly.

Laden with an armload of books, he managed to close the door to his room and strode forward, only to be yanked back rather rudely about two steps in. Rose blinked in surprise... which soon turned to amusement as she watched him realize he'd shut part of his gown in the door. He rolled his eyes in exasperation and she grinned like a loon. She was too far away for him to notice her, and far too amused to go and help him just yet.

He tried simply pulling with his body but the fabric didn't budge, merely pulled his shoulders back and gave him even less leverage. He looked for somewhere to put the books down, tried to lean forward and put them on the wide, flat banister railing but couldn't reach. He heard voices downstairs and peered over the banister as though he was considering calling out, then pulled back without doing so—Rose would have bet money he was just too proud to be seen in his current predicament. He tried stooping to put the books on the floor but couldn't bend low enough to do so neatly and quietly; his only option would be to let them tumble in a noisy mess and again, being him, that was out of the question. Rose held a hand over her mouth in her effort not to laugh. She wished dearly they were in the digital age and that she had something to film this with. She would so never let the Doctor live down his time as a stupid ape.

By now his exasperation was reaching the boiling point. Rose figured it was time to save him, but before she could move there was an unexpected voice from the other end of the hall: "I daresay, Mr. Smith, you're not likely to get very far without some help."

Mr. Smith's face flushed with alarm and dread; he turned to see the voice's owner... and Rose was surprised to see his horrified reaction melt into sheepish relief. "Matron Redfern," he smiled, his ears turning pink. "You're a lifesaver."

Rose's stomach flipped a little unpleasantly. She generally liked the Matron—who was tough, but never without reason or an underlying kindness—but she hadn't realized that she and Mr. Smith had a certain... comfort level.

She watched as the Matron opened the door for him and released his gown. His sheepish smile remained, and apparently without the crutch of blustering about inferiorly-designed human doors he had nothing to make a fuss about. He smiled shyly and nodded at the Matron's gentle teasing, ear tips ablaze, and walked off with her, talking. Rose didn't like this at all. She found herself following them at a discreet distance, listening to their strolling banter with an analytical ear.

Nothing was said that was too familiar or personal, light chat but with an ease about it that kept the conversation flowing. Joan was saying that although they hadn't known each other long, she really did prefer he call her Joan. Mr. Smith smiled and replied that being called John would suit him better too. Rose frowned. He was certainly more willing to talk to the Matron than most of the others he worked with. Rose couldn't say she disagreed with his character judgment, but it was just...ooh. She listened harder.

They stopped in front of a posted flyer in the hallway, announcing the town dance. Joan drew his attention to it, dropping hints about wanting to be asked to go. Rose discovered she was holding her breath.

But then she saw Mr. Smith—John's—eyes as he turned to the Matron. They held a complete understanding of what she wanted, and a sort of kind sympathy that a woman in Joan's position would not want to see. He made polite excuses and said he wouldn't be attending. Joan smiled, tight-lipped, nodded and excused herself, her dignity wrapped tightly around her. Rose ducked quickly into a doorway to avoid being seen.

Really, that dignity the Matron maintained was much the same as Mr. Smith's—they weren't that dissimilar. Joan hadn't been far off the mark in wanting to get closer. Nevertheless, Rose felt a kind of fierce relief, and wouldn't have minded telling the Matron not to let the door hit her in the arse on the way out.

She strode back to her banister polishing with the air of a mother lion who'd just protected her cubs, even though she'd only eavesdropped. She didn't know if her feelings were justified or deluded or would ever be returned the way she wanted them to be, but she didn't care. The Doctor was hers.

* * *

Rose counted her recent friend Jenny as one of the few perks of her new life. Plump, round-faced and cheerful, Jenny knew the ins and outs of their job as well as _all_ the gossip, gave freely of her experience and watched Rose's back. Rose was terribly grateful for it—none of the other maids seemed anywhere near as kind.

Today they were scrubbing the floors together in the main entry hall. Rose now realized, with the understanding that only experience brings, that the work people were forced to do before modern machinery was simply soul-crushing. Jenny, thankfully, always kept her spirits up. Today she took Rose's mind off Mr. Smith, who had evidently gone through another night of Doctor dreaming. Facts and images from his real life seemed to leak through to his conscious mind almost constantly, and Rose didn't know if that was bad, good, normal or indifferent. What happened if he remembered who he was before it was time – would that let the Family detect him? Was there a chance the transformation hadn't taken completely? Although if she was honest, she worried less about that and more that he might not be able to change back when this was over. The idea fairly horrified her.

Rose glanced at Jenny's ruddy-cheeked profile as she scrubbed away next to her with three times the endurance of any gym-goer Rose had ever known. The faint traces of a smile still clung to her mouth from the last thing they'd laughed about. Jenny was just a little bit amazing.

Footsteps echoed and Rose looked up to see Mr. Smith approaching, swift as ever. She caught his eye with her smile just in time: "Morning, sir."

Mr. Smith smiled down and nodded, maintaining his pace as he passed. Jenny watched him go with a quiet shudder. "Oo. Scary old thing, that one."

Rose rolled her eyes. "Oh, not you too."

"Why not, me too? Skulkin' around here like a vulture, racin' to every appointment like he reports to the Queen herself." She dunked her rag in the soapy water and attacked a spot on the floor, smirking. "Nothin' that bloke needs more'n a good stiff drink and a woman."

Rose blushed ferociously for reasons she didn't entirely understand. Jenny caught it and cackled. "Oh, do we have a candidate?"

Rose's jaw dropped. "_Jenny_!"

"Oh, hush! There's no point tryin' to convince me you're not sweet on him. I see it in your face every time he walks by. Though for the life of me I can't understand _why_."

Rose fought to cool her cheeks and come up with a good excuse, but was interrupted by a smug voice ringing out behind them. "I say!"

Rose and Jenny knew the voice immediately. They sobered and bent to their work as Jeremy Baines approached, trailed by Hutchinson. Baines appraised them coolly. "Does this school pay you to work or to chatter like hens?"

Jenny's head was bowed. "Beggin' your pardon, sir. Won't happen again."

"Oh, I'm not confident of that." Baines' gaze fell upon Rose, and his smile grew oily. "I think you might need some supervision," he purred.

He walked smoothly behind Rose, who became acutely aware that she was still on hands and knees and thus her rear was very much on display from Baines' viewpoint. She immediately sat on her heels. Not a moment later she was horrified to feel Baines' hands gripping her waist, physically pulling her back up to all fours.

"Ah ah ah..." he said. "No sitting down on the job." Rose coloured furiously as his hands took the long way down the sides of her bottom before he removed them; she felt just this side of nauseous. She looked over her shoulder to see him lean against a wall behind her, apparently settling in for the duration.

"Now scrub," he leered.

Rose shook with impotent rage; she wasn't at all sure she could keep her cool or, by extension, her job. She fought to remember her reasons to behave before she ruined everything, till a commanding voice boomed across the hallway. "BAINES!"

Baines and Hutchinson blanched and stood at immediate attention. "Yes, sir!" replied Baines.

Mr. Smith strode thunderously into the foyer, _majestically_ angry. He didn't slow his pace until he'd brought his face within inches of the boys'. "Did I actually see you lay hands on a servant?" he hissed in disbelief. "Did I really see you _fondling_ one of the domestic staff?

Rose tucked her head down, fighting hard not to beam with sheer delight.

"No, sir."

"You mean I _didn't_ see it? So my eyes are deceiving me? Or do you call me a liar?"

"No sir! I... I mean—"

"What_ I _mean is if I ever again see you manhandling a member of the staff in such a manner I _guarantee_ no decent school within two hundred miles will ever look at you. Is that clear?"

"Yes, sir." Baines actually seemed to be shaking.

"Off to class," sneered Smith. The boys cleared the hall in remarkable haste.

Rose looked up at his profile in relief and cheerful gratitude. "Thank you so much, sir. You wouldn't believe how many times I've—" Suddenly his gaze shot down to her, revealing an incensed glare just as fearsome as the one he'd shown the boys. Rose choked on her words.

"Did I ask for an opinion, Miss Tyler?" he snapped.

"N-no sir."

"Then that means I don't care to hear one. Kindly return to work and in future, do you think you could manage to do your job in a manner that doesn't..._inflame _the boys' prurient natures?"

Rose was too shocked to even close her mouth, let alone reply. She watched him sweep off toward the classrooms, imperious as ever.

Jenny was kind enough to continue scrubbing without a word.


	3. Chapter 3

Rose parked her bicycle at the back of the abandoned barn and used a small door near the rear to slip inside, even though the precaution was largely unnecessary. The crumbling building was well off the locals' radar.

Inside, the holes in the roof and walls shot beams of sunny brightness across the open space, lighting up the drifting dust motes. Rose couldn't see the TARDIS in the corner due to the perception filter, but she knew where it was and was almost desperate for its companionship – at the moment it was literally the only old friend she could access. She located the lock and fittedher key into it, thinking how being befriended solely by a piece of sentient technology meant her social life had never been quite this pathetic.

Inside then and a rush of relief for the familiar feel, the comfort sent by the ship to flood her consciousness. She felt like hugging one of the coral struts and wished she had time to go change out of this bloody corset and skirts and into sweats for a while, just lounge around in a familiar symbol of her era with nothing cutting off blood flow. Instead, she climbed the ramp and curled up in the pilot's chair, sitting for a moment with her eyes closed and letting the TARDIS mentally mother her.

Eventually she tapped some buttons on the console, bringing the view screen to life. A few more taps and she pulled up the recording that was the main reason for her visit – the Doctor's instruction tape on what to do while he was temporarily human, changed by the Chameleon Arch to hide his Time Lord-ness from the keen senses of the Family. On it the Doctor sat down in front of camera, adjusting it so his image was centred in frame.

Rose's eyes began welling almost immediately. The mere look on his face showed he was the Doctor and not John Smith, angry 20th century prig. (Not that the Doctor had been exactly a libertine before, but at least he was fun.) She touched the screen and felt how horribly insufficient the gesture was.

"Rose, listen to me, this is important." She choked with some unnamed emotion at his Northern accent. It had disappeared from John Smith – his speech had gone all clipped and proper on her and it was one of the quirks she missed most. Somehow its absence seemed the clearest sign he was gone.

"Here's a list of instructions for when I'm human. Number one, if they find us, you know what to do: have me open the watch. Now be prepared for something if you do: when you tell me what's going to happen I won't understand and I may resist. The life I've taken on will be the only one I've ever known and I won't necessarily want that life to die. But you'll convince me, I know it. If anyone can get through to me, it's you." He grinned and winked. Rose squeezed her eyes shut as tears leaked out the corners.

"Now, number two: don't let me hurt anyone…"

"Too late," she grumbled.

"Number three, don't let me abandon you…"

" Should I let you call me a slag for cleaning the floors?" she snarked.

"Number four, and this is _very_ important: do NOT let me wear a bow tie. Bow ties are NOT cool. A man should not tie things around his neck like he's a puppy left under the Christmas tree."

Rose gave a watery laugh, shaking her head as she wiped her eyes. He really was a nutcase.

The tape kept going, full of reminders to unplug the electric tea kettle and water a few plants and to ignore the "experiment" in his bathtub no matter how much it growled. She kept it on just for the sound of his voice until she came to the most important part; for this she leaned forward and watched every flicker of his face.

"And lastly…Rose, this is the hardest task I've ever asked of you, of anyone, and I know at times it's going to seem impossible. I wish I could tell you what John Smith is going to be like but I don't know myself." He swallowed, looking pained. "I wish I could guarantee that I'm going to remember or recognize how...special you are. I have no control over any of it."

Rose began to cry in earnest now. She knew that, and it made her feel terrible for blaming him.

"But I can't imagine trusting anyone else with something so important, with my very life. You're the only one for the job, Rose. And keep in mind that I _am_ coming back for you, and when I do I don't want to hear _one word_ about anything I did while I was an ape." His grin bloomed then, in all its magnificent lunatic glory. "See you soon."

He reached toward the edge of the frame and the picture snuffed out. Rose let her face fall into her hands. Two more months without the most important person she'd ever met—maybe even without his replacement, for all intents and purposes. She didn't intend to stay close to John Smith if his recent behaviour were to continue. She'd keep near enough to watch over but seal off her heart. Taking abuse was not only out of the question, but potential bitterness over it could conceivably ruin things between them once he came back.

She sighed. She wished she could pilot the TARDIS and skip to the end of all this. She wasn't much enjoying the slow route.

* * *

Rose's plan for the morning was to give Mr. Smith his breakfast as quickly as possible and get the hell out. She would obviously protect the Doctor no matter what, but that didn't mean she had to stick around for his alter ego's Neanderthal rubbish.

Her walk into his room was brisk, the tray she carried and its contents miraculously rattle-free. She reached the table and began laying his things out on to it, quick and sure. Apparently the key to superior serving skills was anger.

She refrained from looking at him and he didn't talk for several moments; she wished she wasn't bothered by that fact but she was, which annoyed her. She kept to her task; the faster she got out, the faster she could be alone with her own brooding and not have to analyse any of his infuriating reactions or non-reactions.

"Rose," came his voice. Head bowed over her work, she squeezed her eyes shut and didn't respond. "Rose, you're obviously very angry."

She straightened haughtily and saw his blue eyes for the first time that morning; she knew she'd done well not to look at them before this - they were soft and humble and would have undone her, certainly. "What makes you say that?" she asked shortly.

"You're not acting yourself." He looked flatly at the items on the table. "You haven't knocked anything over."

Rose fought the traitorous, snorted laugh that wanted to emerge and only partly kept it from escaping. He caught it and a quiet smile relaxed his face.

"I'm sorry, Rose. Terribly sorry."

Rose blinked in surprise and tried to hide that, too. The words were astonishing out of either of the men in front of her. "All right, " she offered finally, at a loss for a reply.

Mr. Smith looked dissatisfied and moved to perch on the edge of a desk, nearer her. "You must know, I didn't mean to snap at you." He paused. "I _did_ mean to snap at Baines…"

"And you did that quite well." A small smile. That _had_ been a thing of beauty.

He smiled wryly and shrugged. "Well, it was appalling, what he did—actually laying hands on you." He got lost with his thoughts for a second. "I don't know why but that really made me very angry."

Rose felt shivery. The man he'd been shimmered before her, for just a second.

"Not to mention the way he spoke to you both. We're not only educating these boys, we're teaching them to be gentlemen. I know I'm alone in this opinion, but I can't abide rich young men thinking their station gives them license to do anything and everything they want to. I make it a point to disabuse them of that notion whenever I feel I can."

Rose raised an eyebrow in keen interest; she knew very little of his TARDIS-supplied backstory. "Did you know a lot of young men like that growing up, sir?"

"What? Oh, no," he said distractedly. He grew vaguely uncomfortable. "I wasn't…born to the life I lead." Rose waited, but he didn't elaborate.

His focus returned and he addressed her earnestly. "In any case, after I reprimanded Baines, I just…I felt it necessary to make a show of…non-favouritism, I suppose you'd call it. And I was quite caught up and I suppose I got carried away somehow. It came out much harsher than I'd intended."

Rose blinked. "Non-favouritism?"

Mr. Smith rubbed his hands together, thinking. "Rose, you and I are already somewhat…familiar, with each other. We..." He paused, as though building up to a confession. "…enjoy each other's company." He smiled, looking a little vulnerable. Neither had ever actually mentioned their rapport out loud. Rose couldn't help but smile back which made him look happier, their expressions building off each other.

"Which you know already pushes the boundaries of the relationship between a servant and her employer, in some people's opinion. Add to that the fact that you're a…" he faltered a moment. "…young, unmarried woman, and—you are unmarried, yes?"

Rose bit her lip, amused. "Yes sir, I am."

"Yes, well then, you see how outside observers might come to false, problematic conclusions."

He glanced at the door – making sure it was still clearly open, Rose guessed.

She nodded, wishing she could kick this era's mores out on their arses but knowing the effort would be futile. "We are just…friends, sir," she ventured, both of them smiling again at the new title. "We're doing nothing scandalous. Certainly the occasional talk in your quarters doesn't require us to put on a false show?"

He nodded. "Well yes, I do think I'll make it a policy not to rant at you in public again…" He smiled wryly. "…but unfortunately, the reality of our situation almost doesn't matter." His eyes were plaintive. "If anyone in authority here were ever to form the opinion that we had…an inappropriate relationship, you would be out on the streets with no one even asking if any of it were true, I imagine. You'd lose your job with none to replace it this time. Where would you go?"

Rose wasn't sure. Her own invented story was that she'd been a maid for a family who'd fallen on hard times and couldn't afford to keep her, but had arranged for a job for her at Farringham. She could certainly survive on her own in her own time but, caught in this era, she _would_ be completely at a loose endif she were sacked.

She looked at his face, open and concerned. It was yet another bit of his real life leaking through, she mused—they clicked here just as well as before. Back then, an older man travelling with younger woman had been a bit dicey but nothing unmanageable. Now just being friends was a minefield that could potentially ruin them.

And it occurred to her that ruining "them" was exactly what would happen. He was downplaying it, but Mr. Smith would be nearly as stigmatized as she would. Who would hire a schoolmaster known for fraternizing too closely with the female servants?

Rose sighed – the situation really did have the potential to go completely and seriously pear-shaped. She wished she didn't feel such a strong need for his reassurance and attention…his affection, his…well.

She didn't know quite what to say. "I want us both to be all right," she said finally. "But…especially you."

An indefinable look crossed Mr. Smith's face. "Are you feeling better at least?" he enquired.

She smiled broadly. "Yes," she said firmly. "See?" She reached out and knocked over the pepper pot.

For the first time, the Doctor's manic grin lit up Mr. Smith's face. Rose nodded shyly and left without speaking, the faster to get to a private place and let out her gasping sobs of relief where no one else could hear.


	4. Chapter 4

The minute Jenny had mentioned to Rose that there was a pub near the school, Rose had insisted they go. Rose had looked like she thought the trip would save her life. Jenny had smiled and shook her head, just a little puzzled, but readily agreed—she liked a good drink as well as the next person.

Jenny watched Rose take a sip of her half-pint and lean back in her seat near the window. (Rose had been inclined to order a whole pint, and hadn't realised they'd need to sit in the Lounge Bar, not in the Public Bar with the men. Really, this girl! ) Rose closed her eyes and sighed, as if she'd been waiting ages for this little respite.

"Have you been all right this week?" asked Jenny eventually. "You've seemed like there's something on your mind."

"Oh, it's nothing," Rose replied quickly, discreetly wiping a bit of foam off her upper lip. "I'm just tired. A lot more work at a school than at my old family's house, you know."

"Mm hmm," said Jenny. She believed Rose's excuse about as much as she believed in fairies, which was to say not at all. "Nothing's happened? His Majesty hasn't taken another swipe at you?"

Rose gave a little snorted laugh. "Not since the last time."

"Well what, then?" Rose just smiled and sipped her drink. Jenny pressed a little harder: "You do know you can tell me anything, yeah?"

Rose hesitated a minute, her mouth smiling but her eyes strangely sad. "Yeah, 'course." She seemed to accept the offer sincerely, but Jenny couldn't help thinking she'd somehow just made Rose feel the tiniest bit worse.

Her eyes were drawn suddenly over Rose's shoulder to the window, to something in the sky: a bright green light streaked across, arcing in a sharp drop toward the earth. Jenny gave a small, astonished gasp: "Blimey, what's that?"

Rose turned in her chair and suddenly went very still.

"I dunno…" Rose's voice sounded odd. "...but it looks like it landed somewhere."

"Oh, I doubt it. It's probably just a falling star—"

"But it _looked_ like it landed, didn't it?" Rose turned back to face Jenny with an expression just shy of wild-eyed. "If you had to guess where it went, what would you say?"

Jenny blinked. "Well if I had to guess, I'd say it landed on Cooper's Field, but—"

"I'm gonna go see." Rose was out of her seat in a flash, hurrying toward the door.

"Rose!" Jenny was gobsmacked; she stood and called after her. "You can't just run out there! Without your _coat_? It's freezing out!"

Rose didn't so much as glance back, much less answer; the front door was already slamming after her. What was _wrong_ with that girl?

Jenny hurried outside, hoping to stop Rose before she was too far away, but she was already disappearing into the trees. At least there was a bit of moonlight for her to see by. Jenny wilted: was she really going to have to go after her? She wasn't much for running and Rose was moving at a healthy clip.

"Everyone all right?"

A voice from over her shoulder. She turned and found Mr. Smith hustling toward her, out of breath. "Did it happen here, too?"

"D'you mean the light in the sky? Yes sir, we saw it, but it was just a flash. No harm done."

"Oh, it was more than that," Mr. Smith averred, looking dazed. "I was out crossing the wood, and suddenly I was _bathed_ in light. Green light streaming down, as if from Heaven itself! I was absolutely blinded. Then it disappeared for a moment and reappeared about a hundred yards away. It was fantastic!"

Jenny realized the look in his eye was like a positive version of Rose's – wild and eager to begin the hunt, but in his case also exhilarated. She shook her head imperceptibly.

"Well, the only problem we have is that your maid Rose just went dashing out toward Cooper's Field to find out what it was."

Mr. Smith's eyes snapped to hers, alarmed. "She did what?"

"Just went dashing out, into the dark like a mad thing. _Without_ her coat."

"In this weather?" He looked shocked. "She can't do that!"

"That's just what I said, but I might as well have been speaking Chinese for all she listened. I was just about to go out after her."

"No, I'll go," Mr. Smith assured her, looking distractedly out at the path toward Cooper's Field. "You stay here and keep warm yourself."

Jenny nodded, watching him leave. She had no doubt he would look after her friend, but was also sure it wasn't his only reason for going.

She shook her head again, a strange sinking feeling growing in the pit of her belly.

Peas in a bleedin' pod, those two.

* * *

John hurried between the trees toward Cooper's Field, his blood rushing for reasons more than just exertion.

He kept a nervous eye out for any more lights in the sky, simultaneously hoping for and dreading another inexplicable event. He wanted more evidence to help explain what had happened, but also wanted to be able to keep his head in the face of it and wasn't at all sure what his limits were.

Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. He wondered if it had ever happened to anyone.

His ankle caught and twisted a bit in an unseen hole; he barely maintained his balance as he extracted himself. What had Rose been thinking, charging out into this countryside without so much as a lantern? Or proper clothing? He'd never heard of a female so impetuous, so reckless. His mind began drifting toward other adjectives, too, like…intrepid. A corner of his mouth drifted upward despite his concern. One might use "foolhardy" as another word for "fearless."

John always thought he knew human nature like a disappointing book he'd had to read a million times. It wasn't often a person surprised him. When he found Rose he didn't know whether he'd scold her or thank her.

He laughed out of nowhere, quite surprising himself.

But as he continued, a dread began to settle in his stomach: what if he didn't find her? At least, not in a timely enough fashion to save her from injury, some sort of disaster? What if he was being a naïve idiot, rhapsodising this as some sort of merry lark?

He frowned and quickened his pace, ignoring scratches from various branches.

A few minutes later he burst into a clearing to find Rose standing there in the open space, tiny amongst the towering trees and shining pale in the moonlight. She scanned the wide open space with something like desperation but he flushed with relief. "ROSE!"

She startled and her head jerked to face him. She didn't look the slightest bit relieved to have been found; in fact, his presence seemed to make her even more distraught.

He didn't understand, but kept walking toward her. He intended to tell her she'd just done something very, very stupid, had scared and worried her friend and had necessitated him coming to her rescue. But something very different came out:

"Did you find it?"

Rose blinked. "Excuse me?"

"The thing that fell from the sky. Your friend said you saw it too and went rushing out to find it." She simply stared at him, and he raised a conspiratorial eyebrow. "I came all the way out here, risking life and limb to make sure you didn't kill yourself. The least you can do is share."

The strangest look crossed her face then, a mix of wonder and confusion and—was that affection?—and something quite like fear. She really was the most remarkable puzzle. "N-no," she said finally, and he felt, quite honestly. "I've looked all over and not a sign of anything."

John nodded, feeling the potential adventure slip away but finding he didn't mind. "Perhaps it was just a meteorite," he offered. He looked at her. "A bit of rock debris moving through space? They reach great speeds and often heat up and emit light when they enter our atmosphere." He frowned mentally—that was a bit more than he realized he knew on the subject. "Anyway," he said with a rueful smile." Perhaps our imaginations ran away with us."

He watched Rose considering this. "Maybe…" she said. She didn't seem reassured.

_You don't believe that either, _his brain goaded. _What about that blinding flood of light?_ John silenced the voice in his head when he noticed Rose's teeth chattering. "Whatever it was, I'm sure it poses no threat," he said firmly. "And now I must insist we go back. You've been out far too long and are quite seriously risking your health."

Rose nodded and turned to him, shivering visibly, and John found himself at a loss. He would readily give up his coat to her, but it simply was too frigid out—if he were to become incapacitated by cold he would be no good to her. There was only one thing for it.

He began extracting one arm from the sleeve of his heavy coat; Rose looked at him in confusion. "We need to stop you shivering and I need to stay warm enough to make sure you get back safely," he explained. He took the plunge and reached out his arm. "Come here."

She looked at him, wide-eyed and uncertain. He lost some of his confidence, thinking maybe he was being presumptuous.

"That is, if you don't mind," he added gently.

She didn't look at him. "I don't mind," she said softly. She moved into the circle of his arm and he pulled her against his side, draping the coat over her and his arm and holding the whole thing shut as best he could with the other hand. The warmth was a relief to him as well.

"In the name of survival," he said with a soft smile, "we will have to be a bit scandalous. Just for a while."

They started back toward the deeper woods. Rose began to accept his embrace and the warmth it offered, curling herself further into him. John let out a very quiet sigh.

It was a moment before he spoke. "Even though our little chase was all for naught…" he ventured, "it was fun to pretend, wasn't it?" He chanced a look down at her.

There it was again, that expression on her face. A swirl of emotions he couldn't understand, and yet found fascinating. "Yes," she offered finally. "It was." Her smile made its way through at last.

They walked back into the woods in companionable silence.

A moment after they left the clearing, an invisible Jeremy Baines screamed.


	5. Chapter 5

_He's dreaming._

_He's the space man again, in his strange leather armour and time and space are his amusements. He plays them each like a fine instrument, making them cry, making them sing._

_And now he has a companion. His maid, of all people._

_She travels and lives with him openly, without compunction, and she is his partner and his peer. She frees him from captors by swinging through the air on a chain. With a word she stops him killing his most hated enemy; with another she frees it from its own misery._

_She's running ahead of him up the ramp of his time machine while sparks and explosions happen all around. Once the doors are closed and they're safe, they still aren't and he concocts a desperate plan. He fears for her if it's enacted and wracks his brain for another way, but in the end she tells him to carry out the plan—she wants him safe, her Doctor. A madman's device is lowered onto his head and he can't look at her because if he catches even a glimpse of the poorly-suppressed fear in her eyes he'll stop. And then a switch is thrown and a medical obscenity occurs, two hearts fusing into one. It's unbearable._

John opened his eyes, the sounds of his own screams ringing in his ears.

He blinked at the dawn creeping through his curtains. He closed his eyes and spent a moment willing himself to concentrate on what he'd just seen. His rational mind told him that dreams were meaningless, merely the excitations of the previous day burning themselves out. He might have believed that, except that the day before had been markedly free of running up the ramps of space ships.

What was it his brain was trying so hard to burn off? What was the fuel that had started this conflagration, and was accelerating it night after night?

And did it really have to bring Rose into it?

What sort of man was he if he was becoming…preoccupied with her? And what on Earth did she have to do with this spaceman business in his head? What added her to these mad dreams that wouldn't leave him alone?

And why, when he considered the possibility of them leaving him alone, didn't he want them to?

He was hit with a sudden, calm moment of clarity: he adored them. They were a nightly vacation into a land where possibilities, time and power were all limitless. The dreams felt like a gift, like a lifeline.

And every now and then, when they were really enjoying themselves…so did Rose.

Just fleeting moments—the kind of thing that could happen when you were with any friend who seemed to understand you. Nothing to make a man wax too poetic.

Even so…he did seem to have discovered the element they had in common. But the idea of having escapist fantasies irritated him. What was so wrong with his life that he needed to escape it? He'd not only worked long and hard to get where he was but others had given selflessly to help him. It was unconscionable to even consider being such an ingrate.

He groaned quietly and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. He was making too much of this. And it wasn't time to be thinking yet, really. He felt himself drifting back, losing his ability to concentrate. Still a couple of hours to go before it was time to get up.

He fell asleep irritated at himself for feeling so contented about it.

* * *

When Rose brought John his breakfast the next morning, the atmosphere between them was awkward. He behaved pleasantly enough, but Rose knew him too well not to feel a difference. He buried himself in pointless activities, didn't look at her much. She wondered if their "scandalous" walk home had him thinking about appearances again, maintaining "non-favouritism." If so…it was a bit disappointing, but she felt she understood now. She reckoned it was just something she'd have to deal with as long as she was here.

Besides, a little distance might be good for her as well.

Might keep her from forgetting what they were doing here and how she was supposed to be conducting herself. She felt assured now that he cared about her, felt a little less alone. She assured herself that it was best to stop there. In her previous fear and loneliness she might have let her feelings get a bit carried away, lost sight of some things.

Or gained sight of some things that were different...but still the same…and…just as impossible as they were before.

Good grief, who knew what to think anymore?

When she returned to his quarters to tidy up after lunch, he was acting much the same, but it seemed she'd misjudged the reason why.

She had her back to him when he finally spoke; she jumped and nearly knocked over his inkwell. "After our little adventure last night…" he ventured, "I thought of something that might interest you."

He retrieved a blue book from the table next to his bed, finally looking at her as he approached. The expression on his face was somewhere between pleased anticipation and that of a man facing a firing squad. It made her think of when he'd asked her to travel with him the first time; she stifled a sigh.

"Those dreams I have, where I'm the man from space?" he began, holding the book close. "Because they've been so frequent, I began writing them down—as a form of fiction." he qualified. "As I've said, I find them fairly entertaining, so I thought perhaps they should be…preserved, somehow."

He paused a moment, then stood beside her and opened the book in front of them both. The pages were filled to the margins with loopy, fountain pen cursive and scribbled pictures, most of which Rose recognized instantly.

Rose could feel him watching her as she took the book from his hands, leafing through the pages with a kind of quiet, compulsive fear. There were pictures of the Slitheen family and their space ship, crashed into Big Ben, Reapers swooping through the sky around a church, one of those robot-looking helmets he'd spotted in the vault in Utah.

"This is what you see when you dream?" she asked. Her voice came out more alarmed-sounding than she'd meant it to. When she glanced at him he looked like he'd been hoping for a different response.

"Yes," he said, "Some of it. What I remember." She turned the page to a sketch of both the outside and the inside of the TARDIS and he pointed to it. "That's my ship. Or rather, _his_ ship," he corrected, smiling sheepishly.

He began to explain the particulars to her: bigger on the inside, goes anywhere in time and space, semi-sentient and a little bit psychic. He even had a bit of his usual tone of pride and affection as he described her. Rose fought to keep down her worry about what all this dreaming meant. She turned the page to an image of a Dalek and instinctively recoiled, just slightly.

"Oh, you're right to be afraid of them. In my dreams they're the scourge of the galaxy." He blinked at her and smiled. "Funny you'd know that, just by looking."

Rose smiled too, a little embarrassed. "Well, it's a very scary drawing." John grinned and chuckled.

She kept leafing through, looking for anything she should be worried about but also…drawn by the glimpse into his psyche, even his past. There were drawings and names she didn't recognize but which fascinated her. She started to realize she _was_ very interested in the book, wanted to keep it and pore over it.

"I want to read it all," she confessed finally. "And ask you about everything."

His face relaxed for the first time since she'd arrived, warming with gratification.

"I'm sorry, am I interrupting?"

The two reflexively stepped away from each other, covering their "caught out" expressions quickly. Matron Redfern stood in the doorway, smiling pleasantly, looking quite guileless.

Which made it really difficult for Rose to resent her, but she managed.

"Oh, no, not at all." John smiled. He slipped it quietly into a desk drawer; Rose moved back to her tidying as Joan entered.

"I came to ask you about that horticulture book, the one you mentioned the other day?"

"Oh yes, yes…" John moved to his bookshelf, searching.

Joan looked to Rose and smiled politely, then turned back to John. "I didn't mean to eavesdrop but I'm afraid I overheard a bit…you were discussing another book?"

Rose watched John's ears turn pink. "In a way, yes."

Joan's smile grew sheepish. "I must say…I'd very much like to see what Rose found so fascinating. Her reaction has me quite curious."

John looked nervous again, but with Joan looking at him expectantly he eventually rolled his eyes in good-natured embarrassment. "Oh, all right. But I forewarn you, it's…sheer stuff and nonsense."

Joan was soon leafing through the book, John explaining. Rose could see the Matron's curiosity was quite genuine; she couldn't really blame John for obliging her. She brought a rag out of her apron and began dusting. John seemed to enjoy explaining it to Joan—perhaps equally as much as he'd enjoyed explaining it to her, Rose couldn't help noticing. She consoled herself with the memory of how John had opted not to invite Joan to the dance.

She reached the fob watch resting on the mantelpiece—the receptacle that, unbeknownst to John, held everything the Doctor was. She glanced over at him as she approached it, as she always did—he was oblivious to it, lost in his explanation. Encountering the watch never failed to fill her with a certain trepidation—it was such a fragile little thing to be holding all her hopes and dreams, the entirety of both their futures, the sum total of perhaps the most powerful being in the universe.

She ran her rag over it gently, suppressing a little shudder. The thing always hummed at her with a strange, tuneless music whenever she touched it, filled her fingers with pins and needles as though it were vibrating. She never wanted to stay with it long.

Rose became aware of Joan glancing at her. She supposed she was outstaying her welcome. She went to the middle of the room and addressed them.

"Will that be all, sir?" she asked.

"No, Rose, thank you," John replied. The look in his eyes apologized for the interruption. Rose's nod assured him it was all right. She felt relieved he'd obviously talk with her about it more, another time.

Rose's look moved to the Matron, only to realize Joan looked sort of…startled. A little bewildered, lost in thought.

Rose smiled gently, amused. "They're only stories, ma'am," she advised. "No need to get too caught up."

The Matron's eyes flicked to Rose in irritation. "Yes, I believe I understand that, thank you." She immediately looked as if she regretted being so short, but simply glanced away and made no move to apologize.

Rose, having no idea why what she said was so wrong, simply left. She would _never_ get the hang of being a servant.

* * *

Unfortunately, the culture shocks weren't over for the day.

Rose was cleaning a room with a large window that gave a view of the firing range. John was presiding over a class that was learning to fire a machine gun, in teams of two. The shots popped harshly through the chilly morning air, breaking the peace of the countryside. Rose stopped and leaned against the window ledge to watch the class in session.

John stood in a commanding posture—straight back, feet parted, hands behind him, chin high and haughty—as the boys put the weapons through their paces. His face was stony and his gaze travelled over them in cool, silent assessment. He was the picture of unswerving English male authority.

That is, if the person looking at said picture wasn't Rose.

As she watched, Rose realized John gave the boys little instruction or correction—he interacted with them the bare minimum amount, if that. He had no advice or enthusiasm for the subject, as some of the other instructors did. Rose knew the reason instinctively.

He hated the guns.

The stone in his look and in his stance came from the effort of keeping himself there, from not fleeing the scene or taking a sledgehammer and smashing every one of them.

She turned back to her cleaning. Apparently this time period wasn't necessarily easy on either of them.

A few minutes later the boys began returning from the firing range to the school building proper. She saw Timothy Latimer enter and proceed down the hall, lugging a bucket filled with spent shell casings, apparently charged with their cleanup. Timothy was a boy so small and delicate-looking she barely believed he was old enough to attend the school—the idea that he should be made to shoot a machine gun… She shook her head.

A moment later she startled as the bucket was shoved out of his hand by someone swooping up behind him, sending hundreds of casings crashing and clattering and rolling. The culprit was Baines' thoroughly-obnoxious friend Hutchinson, who pushed Latimer rudely against the wall.

"I haven't seen that history report I told you to write for me," he snarled. "What seems to be the problem?"

The tiny blond boy's eyes were wide, but not surprised. "I've had quite a lot of assignments. I'm finishing as fast as I can."

"Well, I don't give a toss about your bloody assignments. I want mine by tomorrow morning or I start breaking your fingers. Do you hear?" Timothy nodded. Hutchinson gave him another contemptuous shove before leaving. "Stop wanking and get it done."

Rose wished more than _ever_ she wasn't stuck in this stupid powerless position of hers. But from the corner of her eye she saw something that made her heart skip happily: John was in the hallway now; he must have seen the whole thing. Perhaps Hutchinson wasn't too far down the hall to catch.

John quietly sized up the situation and Latimer. "You will have this cleaned up before the next bell," he stated simply.

"Yes sir," said Latimer softly. John continued past.

Around the next corner he found Rose waiting for him. He raised his eyebrows expectantly, pleasantly, waiting for whatever she wanted to say.

"Why me and not him?"

"Excuse me?" He was confused.

"Why would you defend me and not that tiny frail little boy back there?"

John's brows dropped and furrowed. "You mean Latimer?" His eyes focused as he understood. "Well…it's entirely different. _You_ have no recourse—to respond to unpleasant treatment would lose you your home and livelihood. _He _does, and he needs to learn to use it. To toughen himself."

Rose folded her arms. "So cruelty is character-building, is it?"

John's face became slightly sterner. "It's how he'll become a man," he insisted evenly. He stepped closer. "It may seem cruel to you, but…you're a woman, you're naturally sentimental." He clearly believed this as fact.

Rose didn't know what to say anymore—she was mostly just _tired_. "I thought I was a person, who naturally had feelings," she sighed and walked away. She was sure something somewhere needed scrubbing.


	6. Chapter 6

On a rare, miraculous day off, Rose crested a slight rise in the road and for the first time saw the town that neighboured the school.

She'd never come here before—for the first few weeks any time she had off was spent recovering from utter exhaustion. Evidently she was gaining endurance; she smiled to herself.

She looked around the small square, deflating a bit at how little she found: a modest collection of very utilitarian shops, an old church, etc. To be sure, she hadn't expected _Disneyland_ or anything, but she had hoped she could wander around for an hour or so—as it stood she'd be able to see everything in about 15 minutes, if she stretched. Still, there were a few kinds of shops that no longer existed for her—the cobbler's, for example—might be interesting to see how things were done there. And the Sweet Shoppe did hold promise, calling to the tiny bit of spending money she had burning a hole in her coat pocket.

Despite all attempts to be positive, though, her heart sank a little as she reflected how there was _one_ way a place couldn't help but be fun, no matter where it was—how normally, if she visited a town centre in a strange time she'd be accompanied by…

"Rose Tyler!"

Her eyes widened in surprise, then relief and affection swelled in her chest; she turned to see John approaching. He stopped satisfyingly close in front of her, cheeks (and ears) pink in the cold.

"Fancy finding you here."

Rose couldn't hold back her smile. "Yes, fancy it."

His gaze was drawn to her hat, coat and gloves. "You're certainly dressed smartly today," he commented. "Is this your Sunday best?"

"Erm…" Rose didn't know if it was or wasn't. She panicked—she must have unknowingly dressed too well for her "station." Except the TARDIS had laid it out for her—how could _she_ be wrong? "Yes, I suppose it is…" she improvised, "but…I didn't feel like waiting for Sunday."

The amused look on his face told her her explanation was odd but entertaining enough that he wouldn't press her on it. Quite all right with her. "Well, you certainly won't be taken for a maid in something as fine as that."

It all clicked into place: she was being told her maid status was hidden, allowing her to consort with a schoolmaster in relative peace, at least for the time being.

The TARDIS always did work in mysterious ways.

Rose shrugged, still a mite self-conscious. "Well, there was no grand plan. Just a whim, I suppose."

Conversation lagged for a moment during which John just watched her keenly, something Rose realized he was starting to do more and more. "Glad to see you're still talking to me," he said finally. Rose, remembering the exchange about Latimer, rolled her eyes in an "of course I am" expression. He qualified: "_After_ reading my journal and learning how secretly barmy I am."

"Don't be ridiculous," Rose smiled. "I didn't learn that from your book." Her eyes twinkled with mischief.

John smiled and nodded in grudging recognition of her zinger. "There are other maids, you know."

Rose shook her head. "Not for you. I'm the only one on staff not scared of you."

He chuckled, apparently not the least surprised at the news. He regarded her with a faint smile and a raised eyebrow. "And why is that, do you think?"

Something about the look in his eyes caused Rose's heart to flutter. She kept her composure with teasing. "Well, the others obviously don't know a great softie when they see one."

He made a show of being affronted. "A _softie_?"

"Yes, and there's no point in arguing with me, I'm always right. I have very advanced softie-spotting skills."

John shook his head, surrendering. "What are you doing here all by yourself?"

"Oh," Rose blinked. "Well, my mate Jenny had planned to come with me but…she's made herself scarce. No idea where she's got to." She shrugged. "So I just decided to come by myself."

He nodded sagely. "It seems there is a need here. If you are amenable, I shall gladly offer my services as an escort during your visit. I can fill in bits of local history that might interest you, as well as protect you from any yobs who might take advantage."

Rose nodded seriously, looking around what she felt had to be the least dangerous environment she had ever been in. "Yes, it seems I have been most unwise." She leaned toward him, speaking confidentially. "Are there many yobs?"

John leaned in. "They're hidden in the trees," he replied, deadpan.

Their serious looks gave way to grins as he offered her his arm. Rose took it, feeling lighter than she had in weeks.

* * *

With John at her side, Rose soon found herself quite entertained.

Her modern eyes found fascination in places John overlooked: she lingered an unseemly amount of time at places like the blacksmith's (quite getting on the smith's nerves) and the watermill, soaking up the way things used to be done while John merely shook his head in bemusement. The Sweet Shoppe did not disappoint, offering Rose several never-before-encountered treats to choose from which John helpfully described. Where there wasn't fun, they made their own: strolling through the small church cemetery became a furtive game of imagining what the departed used to look like based solely on their names. Rose loved how John looked like he couldn't quite believe his own blasphemy, but couldn't resist playing the game anyway.

It was during just that game that it happened: John had walked on ahead a bit and Rose was heading over to tell him about a particularly promising tombstone name when she saw him standing outside the churchyard gate, talking to the Headmaster. In the few minutes since she'd last seen him, John's entire demeanour had changed: his posture had gone ramrod, the chill in his blue eyes sub-arctic. He nodded seriously at the Headmaster's conversation and responded with gravity. Every bit of levity about him had vanished and instead there stood the "scary old thing" Jenny had described, somehow landed in the middle of a quaint town on a lovely day.

Rose fell back behind a tree trunk, watching and not moving until their conversation was finished and she'd seen the Headmaster go.

She made her way through the churchyard gate toward John. "Making you talk work during your time off?" She made a tsking noise. "The man's a slave driver."

John turned to her, his smile wan and apologetic. Rose could've pummelled the Headmaster for the transformation he'd wrought. "Yes, it seems he wants to meet with all the Masters this evening after supper." He looked around at their surroundings, everywhere but at her. "I should probably go back and prepare."

Now Rose felt murderous. 1913 was the worst year ever and if she ever did get the Doctor back she was going to pound the crap out of him for landing them here. That blasted encounter had moved John further away from her, this time seriously and without a doubt. Who knew how long it would be before he came back, if ever?

Nevertheless she straightened stoically, preparing for the impending brush-off. "That's fine. I can stay here and look around some more by myself." She tried to seem as unperturbed as possible.

John considered this for a second then abruptly shook himself. "Nonsense. It would be un-gentlemanly of me not to see you home." His face was a mask of seriousness. "Have you forgotten the _yobs_?"

Rose blinked twice before a slow smile spread across her face; it seemed she'd underestimated him. "Why yes, sir, it seems I did. Wherever would I be without you?"

John shook his head in mock exasperation and offered his arm. She took it and they walked out of the square, heading for the school. Rose glanced at John's profile: his smile wasn't 100%, but neither was it gone. He didn't look completely relaxed…and Rose sobered to consider that he probably shouldn't be, and neither should she.

But at least for the walk back, he was hers.

* * *

They trudged up a steep rise in the road, their conversation easy even if their breathing was not.

"You told me before that you weren't 'born to the life you lead,'" Rose mentioned, puffing faintly. "What life were you born to?"

John put his head down and scowled a little, looking embarrassed. Rose felt a little sorry for prying, but only a little. It may have been heartless of her to think this—since obviously John wouldn't know the difference—but she just couldn't bring herself to feel too bad inquiring after memories that weren't even _real_.

"I grew up in the North, in Manchester," he began. Rose smiled a little at the TARDIS's apparent attempt at continuity.

"So I'm guessing your family didn't have money, then?"

"None to speak of. My parents were strictly working class." They came to the top of the rise and John took a deep breath, getting his air back. "There _was_ actually some money in other parts of the family, but there'd been…disagreements in the past." He looked at Rose and smirked cynically. "People not speaking to one another and such." Rose nodded.

He didn't seem inclined to continue. Rose couldn't resist: "So did you used to have a Northern accent?"

His cheeks flared pink and she knew he had. "Oh, _please_ say something in it!" she begged, skipping sideways along next to him, hands clasped in anticipation.

He looked adorably flustered. "Why would you want me to do that?" he sputtered.

"I—I used to have a friend from the North…" She didn't quite know how to finish the sentence. "Someone very special. He had an accent and I miss it."

John's eyebrow achieved spectacular heights. "'_He_?'"

Rose gave him an admonishing smirk. "Yes, 'he.' He was a…friend from another time."

"Hmmf," John grunted, completely Doctor-like. Rose warmed yet ached with the familiarity of it.

But wasn't distracted enough to let him off the hook.

"I haven't forgotten," she grinned.

John rolled his eyes. "I'm not sure I even remember how," he protested.

"Pleeeeease?" She began hopping sideways again, watching him.

He glanced at her once, twice, then there it was: "Oi! D'you mind not _staring_ like I'm an act in the circus? Not a trained monkey, me."

Rose let out a joyful noise and clapped, bouncing up and down in place. John just shook his head, trying to hide the width of his smile and his obvious pleasure at her reaction. "You're just barking, you are," he said, sounding like he hadn't completely switched back.

Rose hurried to catch up with him. "So, you changed your accent on purpose, yes?"

He nodded. "Worked long and hard."

"But why?"

John stared at her as if she'd lost her mind. "So someone _might_ take me seriously. Maybe even give me a _job_?"

"And they wouldn't do that unless you changed?" she pressed.

John looked as though Rose's relative innocence on the subject was baffling, yet making him doubt his own judgment. She was of course well familiar with the politics of accents, but something about his assumption that he had to change to be worthy was making her challenge him on it.

"Well, I suppose someone _may_ have, but I didn't want to take the chance." He peered at her quizzically. "Have you never thought of changing your accent, Little Miss Londonder?"

She considered this seriously. "Maybe, sometimes," she said, then shrugged. "But then I wouldn't be me."

She watched him marvel at her a little. It was her turn to blush.

"So you wanted out of Manchester, then," she said, picking up their thread.

John sighed quietly and squinted into the distance. "Yes and no. I had always wanted out, but…initially I never considered education as a means of doing so."

She waited in quiet expectation, hoping her eyes conveyed that it was safe for him to continue. After a moment he did.

"I had rather a misspent youth, in all honesty. I was something of a hoodlum." A beat and they looked at each other: "A _yob_!" they declared in laughing unison. John's expression soon returned to a quiet smile. "When I was a child I was merely unruly, but when I became a young teen my 'yobbish' behaviour began in earnest. My mates and I, we stole things, broke things, terrorized old people, drank before we were meant to."

Rose nodded in the silence he'd left. "So what changed?"

A look came over John's face then, so pained and intense Rose now feel sincerely sorry for asking. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want…" she said quickly.

"No, I will…" He subtly gathered himself. "There was a night when I was 13 when I didn't go home. Fell asleep at my mate's house after staying out all night causing trouble and raiding his father's liquor cabinet," he grinned humourlessly. A short pause. "That just happened to be the night there was a fire at my house."

Rose's stomach fell into the depths of her shoes. She could see where this was going and she wanted desperately to stop it, but it was too late. "No one in the house made it out." He looked at her. "They all burned."

Rose didn't believe for a second that the TARDIS had implanted this in his invented memories. The stubborn git's unconscious had undoubtedly brought that in on its own, unwilling to stop punishing him even when he _wasn't_ him.

He gazed at the ground. "If I'd been there—"

"Don't you dare," she cut across, surprising herself with her own protective vehemence. Surprising him too, it looked like, but strangely he just looked at her. "I just…I—I want to institute a rule," she said finally. "You're not allowed to blame yourself for anything while you're with me."

He watched her for a few seconds and nodded, smiling slightly, looking terribly vulnerable. A moment later he covered and continued.

"After that one of my aunts from the more moneyed side of the family took me in, spent liberally to send me to school. I felt I couldn't possibly be ungrateful for her gift, and that I owed it to her and—" He built up to his next words. "—the rest of my family not to squander the opportunity. I had to make something of myself. It was time to stop…chasing adventure," he sighed.

"What you did before, that wasn't real adventure," Rose said firmly.

"And how do you know so much about it?" he asked in bemusement.

Rose looked at him with a kind of rueful affection, then reached for a joke. "I am wise beyond my years," she intoned gravely.

John smirked, looking back to the path ahead. "It wasn't always easy, I'll tell you. It didn't really matter the manner of my speech, how much I revealed about my past, the other boys always seemed to find out where I'd come from and make things difficult."

A light bulb went on for Rose. "So they treated you like Hutchinson did Latimer?"

"Tried to."

"What did you do?"

He looked at her frankly. "Made them sorry."

"You 'toughened.'"

"Had to. No one was going to appear and do it for me."

"But wouldn't you like to live in a world where somebody _might_?" Rose warmed to her newly-discovered way of explaining. "Where there's a chance someone with more power and knowledge than you could just pop in and…make things right? Make you feel less alone?" She watched him hopefully.

John, for his part, was marvelling again. "I'm the one who dreams I'm a spaceman," he said finally, "but really, I find it much more likely it's you who's from another world."

Rose smiled as cheekily as she could, using every bit of willpower to disguise the panic that casual, completely innocent remark had just wreaked in her. She took his arm again to comfort herself, and found that it worked.

A few minutes later she dropped it a little self-consciously as they approached the main school building. Neither of them noticed that through a window on an upper floor, Jeremy Baines watched them pointedly, eerily.

Neither did they notice that next to him, so did Jenny.


	7. Chapter 7

_Another night, another dream._

_They're in a basement of some kind, his spaceman self and Rose, sometime in the near future. Music is playing and they're standing close, facing each other, in a dance position but yet…not dancing._

_Rose has her hair up in some strange way and, somehow, a Union Jack pulled tight across her chest. Her face is outlandishly made up, by his standards; he wants to wash it clean, remove the barrier blocking her skin. There's coyness in her eyes and teasing in her voice. She's pushing buttons she knows well, lighting up at the opportunity, goading him toward overdue action._

_He doesn't tease her in return so much as justify, bluster, using his big brain and a superior tone to back her down. She sees the emotion hidden in all of it and allows him nothing. There's a tension building in him and she just keeps stoking it, sure she can handle it, but he thinks she is young and naïve and has no idea the ferocity of what she is working to unleash._

_One last casual jibe and with a crooked grin she slides her arms around his neck—smooth, fragrant skin gliding against his; his vision blurs and Rose gets her way—unleashed, he becomes. His lip curls in a faint snarl and he catches only a glimpse of the shock in her face as he pushes her backward, up against the table behind them. Quickly and authoritatively, he hoists her to sit then presses her back to lie, shoves in roughly to stand between her legs. He towers over her a moment to see her splayed and supine and to watch the surprise in her eyes turn to smoulder, then pins her upper body down with his own, arms on either side and slides his lips over hers as though they've always known the way._

_His head spins with sensation and his groin floods with torturous excitement. Her mouth comes alive under his and can feel the life in her veins and the frenzy of her heart, taste the surge of her emotions. Without thought his fingers drift by her temples and he catches a glimpse of her soul. He forces himself back from it—not yet, not without her permission—but there's no forgetting the blaze of love that's just poured into him, as pure and strong and fiery as anything he's ever seen and oh Rose, _his _Rose...he crushes himself to her as her legs lock around his waist. _

_Her hands burrow greedily under his coat and jumper, her touch and her smell and her breath alighting senses she doesn't yet know he has. He rises briefly to urge her farther up the table; she complies and he climbs on to lay his weight atop her. A shared impulse and he grinds his pelvis down as hers surges up and—_

"OH!"

John's body jolted as he cried out his astonishment to the pre-dawn. He felt dazed and frenzied, dimly felt himself erect and straining against his pyjamas and the weight of the sheets. He pushed upward, letting loose a soft, amazed cry at the sharpness of the pleasure it caused; he felt seconds from orgasm. He took himself in hand like a reflex, finding the presence of mind to shove the sheets off himself before he began.

Rose changed the linens, after all.

An amazingly few short, hard tugs and he was jerking, gasping, swallowing her name to prevent it escaping. Tension released, he surrendered against the bed and lay panting, a wet stickiness cooling rapidly across his stomach.

John stared up into the greyness, trying to make sense. What were these magical powers his spaceman self apparently had? He could read minds, hearts? The experience had been...indescribable, and for a moment he intensely wished it were possible. Being close to a woman had never had a thrill to it anything like that.

He dwelt on it a moment, then felt mentally shut that door. No point in wishing for impossible foolishness.

But even in terms of things he _was_ familiar with…he'd never behaved the way his dream self had with a woman, ever in his life. Never that forcefully, or with the idea that rough, brutish behaviour would not only be allowed, but…welcomed? The way she'd responded—he'd even never _imagined_ such a thing. She'd flared to life beneath him, kissing and writhing and panting and...nearly painful arousal shot through him once more.

Something suddenly occurred to him: perhaps this and any further dreams like it would be a blessing. Aside from the, well, _obvious_ enjoyment factor, they could provide an outlet and give him relief from whatever inappropriate thoughts he was apparently harbouring. Perhaps they could keep his lack of emotional discipline from harming her.

Whether he believed that or not, he didn't let himself think.

* * *

Standing in shooting class that afternoon, the sharp, endless reports of machine gun fire jarred John's nerves even more than usual. This was already the class for which he had the most trouble staying present, but today… today he had mentally left the country.

He was quite aware he was distracted by his dream from this morning, but also…he never remembered being quite so aware of how much he truly disliked this activity, how strongly it went against everything inside him.

It was dangerous knowledge, this, an idea that once planted could fester. He felt a sharp stab of fear at the idea of not being able to keep himself devoted to this task, of the possibility of the inner life that was revealing itself dictating some kind of rebellion. Oh, not that it was so unusual for a person to have a distaste for guns—they weren't in _America_, after all—it was more a fear that if he let this one bit of self-determination escape…

…it might open a floodgate.

This was not a place to let one's emotions run riot, and during his youth when his emotions _had_ ruled him, nothing good had come of it.

_"What you did before, that wasn't real adventure."_

John suddenly could see so far past the horizon...

"Excuse me, sir!"

John shook himself irritably. "Yes?" he snapped. He looked down to find Hutchinson addressing him from his crouched position next to his gun. Latimer hunkered on the other side of it, obviously awaiting unpleasantness.

"Sir, I simply cannot operate under these conditions." Hutchinson sneered in the other boy's direction. "Latimer is being deliberately shoddy. Permission to give him a beating, sir."

John surveyed them both: Hutchinson's eyes were cold and flat and anticipated confirmation; Latimer's were brown and bottomless and helped convey the resignation in his elfin face.

John felt a physical tremor run through him as his decision made itself.

"Mr. Hutchinson!" he erupted in feigned indignation. "Do you presume to usurp my judgment as to who is to be punished?"

Hutchinson clearly would not have been more surprised if John had begun speaking Swahili. "N-no sir," he sputtered in confusion.

John's eyebrow arched above an ice-blue eye in elegant disdain. "Well, to prevent you forgetting yourself in future I think we should make this lesson memorable." He turned to the other boys, who looked nearly as gobsmacked. "The rest of you: class dismissed, all weapons stowed for safety, as Mr. Hutchinson is about to make twelve laps of the firing range, full speed."

He turned back and glared at Hutchinson until the boy rose in utter disbelief and began running for the edges of the firing field. The remaining crowd of boys looked at each other, then hurriedly began stashing the weaponry, ostensibly before John came to his senses. John glanced down to see Latimer positively gaping at him, the word "astonishment" not even beginning to describe the expression on his face.

John shot the boy a wink, then his face erupted into a manic grin. He felt strangely, pleasantly possessed. He turned on his heel and walked back toward the school.

When he did he saw Rose watching him from a window within earshot of the firing range, biting her lip and beaming as though her heart would burst.

* * *

John and Rose walked casually, wordlessly into the hall and then to an alcove where they wouldn't be seen or easily overheard.

"I wanted to tell you," Rose half-whispered, clearly struggling to hold in her excitement, "that I thought about it and you really did have a very good point about Latimer needing to learn to defend himself but I have to say you were ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT!" Rose's glee burst out in the form of a raised voice and a bounce in her feet. John shushed her in amusement as she grabbed both John's hands and shook them; she sheepishly clamped her mouth shut, both of them looking around.

"Well, I'm sure the boy's father will have something to say about it once he hears," John replied in the same half-whisper, "but in the meantime…" He smiled and shrugged.

Rose fairly glowed at him. "Why did you do it?"

"Oh, because Hutchinson's a ponce," he whispered back, eyes rolling. Rose's lips clamped again to stifle another giggle. "Because I wanted to see the look on his face," he admitted with a grin. His eyes caught hers for a moment and suddenly his expression melted beautifully, helplessly. "To see the look on your face," he whispered, smiling, with an honesty and awe that shocked them both. "Exactly like that."

Suddenly all the air went out of the little alcove.

Neither moved, their gazes locked and held. Rose couldn't ever remember a moment between them that was this electric, maybe not even when they'd first met. It lasted until the faraway sounds of boys re-entering the halls from their classrooms gently brought life back.

Shaking herself, Rose squeezed the hands she still held. "Brilliant," she repeated with a smile. "Thank you."

John grinned back and said nothing. Rose wondered if he trusted his voice. They let go and moved off in opposite directions.

Around the first corner Rose nearly collided with Matron, standing with her back turned. "Oh! Pardon me, ma'am," Rose said politely.

"That's quite all right," Matron replied, just as politely. When Rose was gone she glanced back over her shoulder at the alcove where Rose and John had just stood, letting the expression of crushing disappointment and hurt reclaim her face.

She closed her eyes and reached inside her apron pocket, clasping onto something she kept there. A moment of holding it, and she calmed.

* * *

End of the day, twilight outside his room's windows and there was no longer any need or point to pretending he could concentrate; he could hear her.

There was a small room a few doors down the hall that the maids used for storing linens and other necessities, a place where they could get supplies as they made their rounds. Rose was in that room, moving softly. Humming a little. He smiled.

His legs lifted and moved him as though he weren't the one in charge of them. He felt crazy and terrified.

In the quiet hallway, John was soon standing outside the open door to that room.

* * *

Rose turned and saw John half-silhouetted in the linen room doorway and wordlessly put down the stack of linens she was holding. She knew something was different.

No one else would have known, but to her his face and posture were a jumble of contradictions, a combination of features and feelings she'd never seen him personify. His eyes were shy, dark and gentle, yet drank her in more openly and unabashedly than he'd ever done. He moved toward her cautiously in the small, shelf-lined space, but with a quiet intensity that felt very much like being stalked. He looked frightened, and vulnerable, and utterly impossible to dissuade. Butterflies began to riot in her stomach.

He stopped within inches of her; she stared up at him and his attention poured down on her. The sparse light from the half-open door cast shadows over the planes of him: the arches of his cheekbones, the slope and droop of his nose, the Adam's apple in his throat. Rose's heart was pounding so hard she vaguely wondered for her health. She could do nothing but stare, lost in those astonishing eyes, now gone navy with the light and the mood. She couldn't believe it was possible for them to look like _that_, at _her_. Her gaze drifted to his lips – they'd always looked so soft and full to her, almost feminine. But nothing about his proximity or the intentions within it felt feminine just now.

He laid gentle hands on her waist; Rose gave a soft gasp at the touch. He smiled faintly, nervously, and stepped closer. His face drifted in to nuzzle softly at her nose, moved again brush his cheek against hers; he sighed softly at each contact.

Rose's head spun with both the sweetness of it and with sheer anticipation. He continued to move his face around hers, ghosting her with breath and smell and almost-there touches, slides of skin against skin until she was tortured with goosebumps and craving the touch of his lips so hard that when they finally brushed hers she cried out softly into his mouth.

The instant she did he moaned in response and closed his mouth over hers firmly, properly, arms clutching and locking her to him. She melted gratefully into the vise of his hold, which he took as encouragement to pull her in even more. Their lips met and slid and separated and met again, setting every nerve in her body alight. She ran her arms up his broad back and clutched his shoulders, dizzy with sensation and disbelief. His hands moved to her face, warm palms holding her cheeks, fingers working their way into her hair and pulling loose strands from the updo that kept it neat under her maid's cap. This was the rightest thing that had ever happened to her, ever in her entire life.

With what little conscious thought she had available, Rose fought to remember to let him set the pace of the kiss, the behaviour. She had no idea what constituted a proper kiss in this time period and she didn't want to do anything he thought was odd, or—worse yet—whorish. But when she forgot herself and ran her tongue lightly over his bottom lip, he moaned in surprise and crushed her to him even harder.

A small noise in the hallway stilled them, just for a second. Whatever it was continued down the hallway until it was no longer there.

But by then it was too late.

After a beat John broke away breathlessly, resting his forehead against hers. She could almost hear his mind's gears speeding up, feel his brain filling with "what if?"s because if she were honest, hers was doing, too. She didn't know who stepped back from whom, but soon someone had.

She raised her eyes to his and found his face a heartbreaking combination of want, tenderness and fear. She nodded at him, barely perceptibly. He backed toward the door and her heart was screaming at him not to go, but the sound was buried under the noise in her brain.

A moment later she was alone in the small room, numbly tucking her hair back into place. She waited till she was alone in her bedroom in the maids' quarters to start crying, as she couldn't have him hearing her. No doubt he was already punishing himself enough.


	8. Chapter 8

She hadn't seen him all day.

When her racing mind had awoken her that morning (two hours early), Rose had immediately felt horror at the idea of seeing John when she delivered him breakfast. She'd spent the time till sunrise brainstorming excuses that might get her out of it. By the time she had to get up, she'd given it up as a bad job and steeled herself to face him...only to find when she arrived in the kitchen that _John_ had called down to say he wouldn't be needing breakfast—something about a bad stomach. Rose had felt hurt and disappointed, and then felt like an idiot for feeling hurt and disappointed.

Midday now with no encounters, and essentially nothing had changed. She was dying to see him and dreaded him simultaneously, and frankly she hated it. Blimey, where was Jenny? She never seemed to be assigned to work with Rose these days. Rose wasn't really sure how much she'd feel comfortable telling her, but...the company might help. Maybe some conversation to keep her mind from whirling.

The entryway floor swam meaninglessly in front of her eyes—she had no idea what kind of job she was doing scrubbing it and she didn't care. All she could think was how she'd finally experienced something she'd craved since the day she started travelling with the Doctor, but naturally it couldn't be _simple_. She ought to have been rejoicing, and felt cheated that she couldn't.

She felt sure that what she'd seen yesterday were the Doctor's real feelings on display. _This_ was how he could and might behave if only he weren't constantly thinking of himself as an old, damaged murderer who deserved nothing good for the rest of his existence. How he might let himself relax and be if he wasn't constantly thinking of all of time and space and every possible thread of fate and the well-being of every species in existence.

She'd seen it now—tasted it, literally—and she would never doubt her instincts on the subject again. No matter how he kept her at bay in future she would always know he was denying himself and her. And that was exactly it: once he came back, he might go back to denying himself. Provided they got out of this predicament at all, once he got his big Time Lord brain back he could easily regress to hiding within himself, continuing to wear his planet's fate as a hairshirt and single-handedly denying them both the one thing that might make him whole again, if only for the time it took her to live her life. Yes, her life would be brief, but she would argue the healing that being together could provide might give him what he needed to keep going, after she was gone. (She could argue it, but he would resist the subject fiercely—his stubbornness could be colossal.)

She'd have a greater toehold and reason to bring it up after this, but right now—her chest abruptly felt like someone was sitting on it—right now she had his heart, and she didn't want to give it back. She knew she had his heart back in their "real" situation, too, but...not like this.

She knew now that fear of 1913's repercussions wasn't why she'd pulled back in the linen room. To her it didn't matter one iota what anyone thought of them in this century. Let him be fired and whispered about, let her be sacked and labelled a slag; they'd muddle through it and in a few weeks they'd hopefully be back in their old situations and no one here would ever see them again.

The wooden floor before her now swam and blurred, but for a new reason. She blinked in faint surprise when a tear actually splashed down onto it. She'd pulled back because to have the Doctor and lose him might break her completely. She wanted, _desperately_ wanted the Doctor to choose her when he was _him_.

* * *

He finally saw her that day, in a way that just made everything worse.

He wasn't daft enough to think he could possibly keep his mind off her, so he concentrated on simply managing it: packing up his thoughts and carrying them with him. He mentally pictured keeping them off to the side while he tended to any business at hand. When he wasn't occupied, however, his thoughts broke their mental bindings and her image assailed him. Her image and everything he'd experienced about her, there in that room...

At times it became so burdensome he wanted to weep. Nothing had ever meant to him what this did, and there was no solution at hand.

Lost in this, he had rounded a corner and seen her without warning. It was near to the next class bell and a smattering of boys strode the corridors. One of them was with Rose near a stairway, both with their backs to him. The boy's arm was around her waist; Rose seemed to be leaning away.

"Blankenship!" he erupted, immediately sounding wrong to his own ears; his voice was too strained, unnatural. He couldn't stop himself continuing: "Explain yourself!"

Blankenship turned, looking frightened, but when Rose turned to see John her eyes narrowed at him. She patted the boy's shoulder reassuringly, using him as leverage to stand straight again. "Thank you, Malcolm," she said gently. The boy looked at her uncertainly. Rose nodded and the boy made a hasty escape.

John felt full of defensive bluster as Rose approached, appraising him calmly. "I stumbled and almost fell down the stairs," she said quietly. "Malcolm caught me. It was a godsend he was there."

John could hear her words but couldn't process them; his adrenaline refused to abate. Rose's eyes gained an edge of pity and suddenly John knew this was bad. He was wildly grateful there were no reflective surfaces nearby in which he could see his face. This wasn't defending her against Baines, this wasn't chivalry—this was hysteria and obsession. This looked _bad_.

He wanted to say something to fix it, to apologize, to make it go away, but he couldn't even form words, much less think of the right ones. He turned and left as quickly as he could, his face burning.

* * *

Rose sat on her bed near her window, in her flannel nightgown with her arms around her curled-up legs. She'd had the room to herself ever since her former roommate had left to get married, to someone who could evidently take her away from all this—seemed ironic, somehow. She stared out at the night, moonlit and frosty. It was midnight and she knew sleep was absolutely off the table.

Her brain churned with the same thoughts it had fruitlessly tried to process all day. One more round with them would not earn a different result, she knew. She was reaching a conclusion that made her feel shamefully desperate, but was simultaneously concluding she didn't care.

She uncurled herself and reached under her bed for her boots, lacing them up over bare feet. She put her coat over her nightgown, donned her hat, scarf and gloves. Moments later she was outside, traversing the route to the school grounds by moonlight, going as quickly as she could to keep frostbite at bay. It was far too late for anyone else to see her doing so...she hoped.

Once at the school building proper she sneaked up the back stairs, into the hall and arrived at John's door, panting faintly, gathering herself.

If this was the only opportunity she would ever have to be with the Doctor, she would take it with both hands and never look back. She could think of no worse fate than to let this chance go by and realize later it would never come again. The regret would certainly kill her.

She knocked softly, and when he opened his door to find her there he was in his shirtsleeves and suit trousers, tie gone and sleeves rolled messily up. He looked not in the least surprised to see her; his pale eyes were quiet and helpless and intensely thankful. He moved aside to let her enter, shut the door behind her and pulled her wordlessly into his arms.


	9. Chapter 9

(As my dad inexplicably likes to say, "Here comes the smut, Martha." A double-long chapter of it, too, for your patience.)

_**Previously…**_

_Once at the school building proper she sneaked up the back stairs, into the hall and arrived at John's door, panting faintly, gathering herself. _

_If this was the only opportunity she would ever have to be with the Doctor, she would take it with both hands and never look back. She could think of no worse fate than to let this chance go by and realize later it would never come again. The regret would certainly kill her. _

_She knocked softly, and when he opened his door to find her there he was in his shirtsleeves and suit trousers, tie gone and sleeves rolled messily up. He looked not in the least surprised to see her; his pale eyes were quiet and helpless and intensely thankful. He moved aside to let her enter, shut the door behind her and pulled her wordlessly into his arms._

* * *

They collided tightly and instantly, overwhelmed with the relief of kissing and touching, as if they'd been forced underwater for the last 24 hours and, with the contact and presence of the other, were finally allowed air. John pushed Rose's hat off to bury his fingers in her hair; Rose hurriedly shucked her gloves to stroke John's face and hold the back of his neck barehanded. Their hands were in constant motion, each testing the other's reality with every touch.

After several minutes he pulled back for breath, leaning his forehead against hers. "I just… can't believe you're actually here." His eyes rested half-closed as he let his senses take her in. "Somebody up there took pity on me."

"Somebody down here couldn't stop thinking about you," she murmured. "No pity necessary."

"I can't believe you came, what you're risking, for..." He pulled back a little and gestured in his own general direction. "I would never have asked you to do such a thing."

"I know," she said softly. "That's why I went ahead and did it myself."

He smiled in quiet amazement, his eyes growing drugged with her nearness. "And I'm far too selfish to give you back." He nuzzled her gently. "I'm so sorry I panicked yesterday. I shouldn't have—"

"Shh," she soothed, "you didn't do anything I didn't do as well. Besides..." She took a breath, seemingly to quell an onslaught of nerves. "...this is...scary," she concluded, eyes closed.

He nodded and stroked her hair. "Staying away was a choice that I suspect was doomed from the start," he said ruefully. "Once I'd finally given in...I went mad from wanting more, and from the idea that I'd had my chance and ruined everything."

"I felt exactly the same," she murmured, then blinked at him. "You're not kissing me."

John warmed with quiet pleasure. "Let me fix that."

He bent and kissed her gently; her arms tightened around his neck, pulling him down. He savoured the moment of contact and every moment after that. Each touch of her lips was a tonic against something unnameable that had always pained his soul.

Rose was soon whimpering softly and continuously and John's stomach flipped intensely each time; he was rocketed back to the reaction of his dream Rose. On impulse his fingers brushed her temples experimentally, without result. She gave him a puzzled look. He just smiled. _Worth a try._

He was considering the allure of kissing her neck when he suddenly realized how absurdly bundled she still was. He stepped back and bowed slightly. "May I take your coat?" he grinned.

Rose turned pink, as if suddenly remembering. "I look silly."

He unwrapped her scarf, smiling at her fondly. "You are here in my room in the middle of the night when my heart was screaming for you," he said quietly. "That alone makes you the most beautiful thing I can think of." He pushed her coat reverently from her shoulders, revealing her nightgown...and highlighting her bare feet in laced up boots. "Now that looks quite silly..." He grinned when she swatted him.

She wrestled her boots off and tossed them aside, and when she finally turned to face him again she suddenly looked so small and fragile, swallowed by the loose fabric, brown eyes large and blonde hair down, feet and legs and hands small and pink.

How strange that such a creature could wield more power over him than anything ever had.

He gathered her to him protectively. Without the coat—without even underskirts or corsets—the feel of her body was so much more immediate and the clouding of his brain was incredibly strong and fast; he knew he'd better talk before he lost the focus to do.

"Rose," he breathed. "Are we…that is, did you…"

Rose looked up, watching him carefully. "Yes, I...want to, with you," she said quietly. "That is, if you want to?"

His smile was soft and incredulous. "Are you mad?" he whispered. He brushed his lips against hers, and for a moment reality was lost again.

* * *

A moment more, though, and John pulled back, eyes clenched shut. "Except," he said reluctantly, "it wouldn't do to put you in the family way." He opened his eyes and looked pained.

"It can't happen," Rose informed him, not sure how she was going to explain The Pill without actually stating what it was. She'd continued taking it all through travelling with the Doctor and had felt herself rather pathetic for hoping, but now she couldn't have been more pleased to have done.

John stared at her quizzically. "How can you know that?"

"I...had an illness a while ago, a fever, and the doctor who examined me told me that was the case," she tried.

He blinked and stared at her plaintively. "You can't have them _ever_?"

Rose felt herself flush warm with affection—the faint disappointment in his tone was so endearing she could hardly stand it. "No, he said I could eventually, someday, just...not now." He remained puzzled. Rose pulled herself closer. "Can you just trust me?" She looked him in the eyes. "I wouldn't lie about this."

He relaxed incrementally, till he finally seemed resolved. "I suppose doctors know best," he smiled. He didn't know the reason Rose laughed out loud.

She quieted his befuddlement by kissing him again.

They continued to stand and kiss and Rose felt herself steadily going mad. The hunger in his kisses was becoming dizzying, and his ardour everywhere else was building—the grip of his hands clenching at her more and more insistently, his lips relentless.

She was impatient to touch him everywhere, wanted to taste inside his mouth, wanted to peel off his clothing and reveal the hard, warm, achingly masculine body she'd been dreaming of for months but she held back from all of it. She didn't know what the norms were, what was expected of her, who she was supposed to be. She was afraid of revealing herself as different or—even worse—putting him off her.

He pulled his mouth away and saved her the trouble. "Rose," he gasped, "please don't think me an animal, but...may I take you to the bed?"

Rose nodded, and he led her by the hand to his bed and then joined her. He gently pushed her nightgown off one shoulder, smoothing his hand over the newly-revealed skin.

"Please let me know if I push things more quickly than you'd like," he said softly.

Rose nodded again, and John leaned forward to kiss her exposed shoulder. Rose bit her lip at the sheer deliciousness of it. He kissed along her collarbone to her neck and Rose's hands floated to the front of his shirt, undoing the buttons. She pushed his braces down and he pulled back to watch her as she spread the shirt open, revealing his undershirt (_Uch._ S_tupid 1913 and all these layers_). She untucked the undershirt, slid her hands under the hem and ran them over his chest. John's eyes drifted closed and he sighed, his hands clenching where they lay against his thighs.

She couldn't help lingering on his nipples, making contact softly with the pads of her fingers, causing him to flinch in pleasure. When she looked up at him again, John's eyes held in a kind of quiet realization: "This isn't your first time," he said.

Rose froze and her stomach twisted. "What did I…"

He shook his head. "Nothing, really—you're just...not shy, or uncertain. I don't know, I just suddenly knew."

She couldn't lie to him...completely. "There was one man," she admitted quietly, deciding it was only a slight crime to shave one whole person off her list of two if it helped keep things from falling apart. She thought of Jimmy Stones: "I thought he loved me." That was certainly true enough. She watched his face, her heart now in her throat. "Is that a problem?"

"No," he said immediately, smiling quietly. Rose felt herself relax incrementally as John guided them down to the bed to lie close together, face to face. "Though I must say," he said, his voice husking, "it would have been quite something to be the first to touch you." His hand stroked up and down her arm, his eyes roamed her, and his voice dropped in pitch and volume. "I know I'd certainly like to be the last man who ever does," he murmured. His eyes rose nervously to her face, apparently afraid he'd said too much, too fast.

Rose just stared at him, afraid to say anything about his apparent slip-up. "What about you?" She covered. She _was_ curious to know the TARDIS had put in his head.

For once it didn't seem as though the memories were clear or immediate – his look became faraway, and a little confused. "I was married once." He paused for several seconds. "She's gone now," he said finally, looking to her. Rose nodded, as if she understood.

He ran his fingers softly across her collarbone and shoulder. "It's never felt like this, though."

"No," Rose agreed immediately. "Not for me, either."

A quiet smile bloomed on John's face. "Well, then the other times didn't count, did they? I'd say this is a clean slate, don't you think?" Off Rose's amused nod, he said "Right then. I declare this both our official first times."

Rose bit her lip against a smile. "Well, I suppose I should start being much more shy, as you mentioned. Make you promise to treat me gently and such," she teased.

"Oh, this is nothing to be taken lightly," he said. "I must do this properly." The playfulness in his look faded and his expression became as serious, as breathtakingly earnest as she'd ever seen. He rose to sit again, bringing her with him, and took her hand.

"Miss Tyler...I have no words to express the change you've brought about in me, the feelings you've awakened. You make me feel emotions..._passions_ I thought long buried and cold." Rose stared at him with a building awe: all the beauty and power in his clear blue eyes was focused entirely on her, and she found she could scarcely breathe.

He leaned closer. "I feel like my entire life has blossomed into something miraculous, all due to the goodness and fire and humanity I see in you. I can't stop watching you, just to see what new wonder you'll reveal, what part of me you'll open up next. You make me wish for more ways to touch you—I'm aching to touch your skin but...I wish I had a way to touch every beautiful thing I see in you.

"Please let me attempt to show you everything I feel. I'll never be worthy of it, but..." His free hand cupped her face, eyes never leaving hers. "...would you do me the honour of entrusting me with your virtue?"

Rose's heart had stopped completely.

"You _are_ the only man who'll ever touch me again," she breathed.

An urgency gripped them then that shut out everything else.

* * *

Rose Tyler couldn't remember any time before this moment.

This moment when she was fiercely clutching the Doctor to herself, bed sheets tangling around them, kissing and touching him as much as she wanted to, the way she'd always wanted to. Her head spun at the utter _steel_ of his erection against her thigh—dear God, the thought of him, _the Doctor_ finally responding to her this way had her in an anguish of arousal.

No matter what happened next, she would have this. She was experiencing the Doctor as a _man_, not some fearful celibate substitute—and it _was_ the Doctor, no matter what his alias or current biological disguise. She had broken open his secret and now it was hers. She knew him this way, knew the potential was in him, knew what he felt for her and would defend that memory for as long as she lived.

He seemed to have been emboldened by their talk. His hands roamed her body everywhere they could reach, clutching and pulling and smoothing over her with the unmistakable touch of a man in tremendous need. But he was still doing so over her nightgown—she needed his hands on her skin.

As if he'd read her mind he hauled her upright. "Let me see you," he panted, lips punished and swollen, eyes drugged. His hands went to the hem of her nightdress but she caught them. She knew she had nothing underneath her nightgown and once he took it off he'd be far too distracted to catch up; she wanted them on an even footing. "You first," she whispered.

John seemed both amused and aroused by her request. He sat back and removed his shirt, then lifted off his undershirt; Rose could almost feel her pupils dilate at the sight of his hard, smooth chest, and the stab between her legs was terrible, in a wonderful way.

He reached for her again but she moved aside coyly, biting her lip. "You're not finished." John moved back and continued to oblige her, eyes riveted to her as though she were the most fascinating new species of creature he'd ever seen.

She was aching to see all of him—she'd waited so long. He unfastened his trousers and pulled them off, revealing for her a pair of long underwear with a severely tented front. Despite the haze in her brain she had to suppress a smile. Then the underwear followed and there he was, bare and strong and lean, wiry and beautiful. The moonlight coming in the window showed off the planes and angles of him and his cock stood at rigid attention; her stomach positively _wrenched_ with arousal, thinking of how desperately good it would feel, sliding in and out. She caught him looking at her with an amused uncertainty.

"All right?" he asked quietly.

She met his eyes and smiled. "Very." With a shift of where she sat Rose moved off the hem of her nightdress, and held it out toward him.

He smiled and his eyes grew hungry; he crawled over the bed toward her and took the edge of the fabric, pulling it slowly over her head. A moment later his intake of breath at the sight of her naked was the most gratifying sound she'd ever heard. She gazed at him, spellbound, as he took her in, his expression enthralled. He said nothing, reaching to stroke her breasts. He palmed them gently and Rose gave a low needy moan. She watched his nostrils flare and his focus grow even keener. He pushed them both back to the bed and moved his body to cover hers, lying his weight atop her and both gasped at the feel of skin on skin; John gave a soft growl and Rose and began to get an inkling of just how strongly her reactions affected him.

Their hands moved to touch and glide wherever they could reach. His lips assaulted her neck while hands roamed her sides, down along her hips. When he reached between their bodies, positioning himself she stiffened slightly. It wasn't that she wasn't aroused or ready, but…

"Wait," she whispered.

…Rose wanted something else.

She wasn't sure, but she had a feeling that during this period sex for women was a little "lie back and think of England." She had no idea how much he knew about her body or how he expected things to go. No matter how much he cared for her, he might not know well enough to do what she needed. And she was unwilling to paste on a smile and pretend she was satisfied when she wasn't.

She wanted him to know her.

And besides, there was that little inkling that had formed a moment ago...

John had paused, watching her. Rose met his eyes and gently took his hands and moved them to her breasts, guiding them to move the same way he had done before. He looked a little surprised but readily complied, moving to support himself on one elbow, watching her breasts move and contort with fascination, and looking promptly to Rose's face as her breath quickened.

Rose kept her eyes on his as best she could—giving him every twinge of sensation that crossed her face, showing him openly what this was doing to her—but within a few moments it was torture trying to keep her eyes open. She wanted to drift off with the sensations... and she wanted more. She took the hand of the arm he wasn't leaning on, and moved it between her legs.

John watched her curiously as she covered her hand with his and began stroking herself, using his fingers as the tools to do so. At first just exploratory, general sweeps and touches that made her sigh, till finally she narrowed in on her clit. The first touch made her jump and push her head back into the pillow on a moan.

The intensity of John's look ratcheted up a notch.

She kept his hand there and began concentrating the motions on that spot, occasionally moving his fingers to sweep across areas that also needed attention. Soon she couldn't stay still, her back arching, her hips rising. One arm went up around John's back and she gripped his shoulder hard and pressed herself against him. She let out a helpless noise and heard John moan as well.

"Rose," he whispered raptly, "the way you _sound_..."

Moments laterhe gently moved her hand away from his. She opened her eyes to see him staring at her with a fierce, determined arousal. He moved his fingers in a few new ways, clearly cataloguing her reactions. The movements that made her quiet were quickly rejected, and those that made her keen and squirm were immediately repeated. Rose could have sworn his Time Lord intelligence was still at his disposal, watching the speed with which he learned. His other hand kept glancing over her nipple, making it all build that much faster.

Feeling his fingers, watching his face...sense abandoned her quickly and she grew desperate for his touch inside her. She reached down to reposition his thumb on her clit and guided two of his fingers into her, showing him how to curl them inside and move them in and out. A bit of practice and he had it well enough that she was getting what she needed, soaking up the feelings greedily. She was so glad she hadn't been too shy to show him this and that even if he decided afterward that she was a demanding freak, it would have been worth it.

But there seemed little chance of that. She was starting to gasp and cry in a regular rhythm, and each sound she made had him rubbing himself against her side, seemingly subconsciously and out of his control, grunting and gasping on his own.

The utterly delicious slide of his fingers against her opening, the slip of his thumb and the last coherent thought she had was that she hoped she could keep herself from yelling "Doctor" when suddenly her body crested and she was coming and coming, wave after devastating wave. She clutched his arm hard and ground herself shamelessly against his hand, wringing every bit of contact out of the experience and sobbing out sounds that made no sense and when she was finally able to open her eyes she saw that John's eyes were like laser beams, their colour alight from the beams of angled moonlight shining in and staring at her as though she must come from another world.

_He should know_, she thought, chuckling weakly. So intense. She had never felt _anything_ so intense. And judging by the look in his eyes, neither had he.

Her inkling had been right.

* * *

John's heart was pounding and he couldn't catch his breath. He'd never seen, never felt anything like that. He'd never known a woman to be so _mindlessly_ overcome with pleasure, so taken by a perfect storm of ecstasy. It was the logical conclusion of how she'd behaved in the basement scene he'd dreamt about, but even so he was shell-shocked, his manhood so hard it ached.

"You are literally the woman of my dreams," he murmured heatedly.

"Hmm?" she asked, still breathless.

"Explain later," he choked out. "That was magnificent. I've never seen that happen to a woman."

She met his eyes, very deliberately. "You made me feel that," she whispered. She reached out her arms with a smile, welcoming him in.

He fell upon her senselessly, his control utterly lost.

His mouth connected nearly viciously with hers; he kissed her with utter abandon. With just a movement of his hips he slid into her like oil over silk. She was unspeakably hot and swollen and wet; the room tipped and spun.

"Rose…you're a miracle," he gasped against her skin. "You feel like a miracle."

He began thrusting into her, over and over, feeling and hearing her begin to respond and make those noises that were rapidly becoming the only sound he ever wanted to hear. Every sense was consumed by her: the smell of her skin and breath and hair, the taste of her mouth, the hot, clinging slide of the channel between her thighs.

It was all building, building to an undeniable conclusion that began with reason leaving him, him pushing madly to get more of himself inside, wishing the structures of his body would break and fold and melt until he could merge with her and there would be nothing separate anymore and everything in him could feel every bit of her.

It was breaking, it was breaking, he was—

—gone.

A nearly inhuman noise ripped from him as the first surge came, and he gushed into her again and again and again.

He collapsed his weight onto her, lungs heaving, and she clung to his back, stroking it.

They did not separate for a very long time.

* * *

Even later in the night, Rose woke from her place curled at John's side, sleepy and comfortable and lulled by a profound kind of peace.

Until she noticed a certain facet of John's sweetly sprawled and sleeping form: a protrusion, tenting the sheets.

She grinned hugely. A nighttime erection. How very _human_ of him.

She wondered how scandalous the woman-on-top position might be in this day and age, and whether John had any memory of ever being woken up for a quickie.

She put her lips near his ear. "John?"

Barely awake: "Hmmf?"

Her grin intensified. "I have an idea..."

Minutes later she was arching atop him, squeezing for maximum contact when she suddenly jolted: John had slipped his finger in against her clit and was sliding it _exactly_ how she needed him to, sleepy eyes cleared and once again watching her with that laser beam stare.

"You're amazing," she panted. She threw her head back. "I _love_ how quickly you learn..."

He watched her in sheer reverence, gasping for breath. "And I want to hear _all_ your ideas."

* * *

A few hours later, just minutes before dawn, John finally released Rose to go back to the servants' quarters, but only after extremely lengthy, reluctant goodbyes.

She couldn't keep the warmth of his bed, but she got to take with her the feel of his kisses—still a dull buzz against her overtaxed lips—the smell of him clinging to her skin and the memory of every moment playing vividly, over and over through her brain.

And if she'd not completely left her heart with him before, she'd absolutely done so now.


	10. Chapter 10

_**- Previously -**_

_A few hours later, just minutes before dawn, John finally released Rose to go back to the servants' quarters, but only after extremely lengthy, reluctant goodbyes._

She couldn't keep the warmth of his bed, but she got to take with her the feel of his kisses—still a dull buzz against her overtaxed lips—the smell of him clinging to her skin and the memory of every moment playing vividly, over and over through her brain.

And if she'd not completely left her heart with him before, she'd absolutely done so now.

* * *

A mere few hours later, Rose was climbing the back stairs with John's breakfast tray.

She'd managed half an hour, more or less, of dozing. She had washed up as best she could back in her room—what a time to have only a bowl and pitcher—before returning to the school, greatly fearful she would reek of her activities the night before. She thought she had succeeded well enough but still carried the paranoid fear that everyone who passed her could tell. She felt as if it radiated out of her—after all, her entire world had changed. Her fondest dream had come true more splendidly than she could ever have hoped. Her soul felt complete for the first time ever, if they were playing anywhere around her all the love songs of her time would make sense and she'd found the meaning of life. How could that not show on a person?

She was tired and wired, shell-shocked and overjoyed and petrified, and felt utterly out of control.

She arrived at his door and tried to act normally, except she found she'd never really paid attention to what "normal" was before this and had no idea what it meant. She tried for "businesslike," hoping it would all be conveyed in one simple knock. To keep her secret from anyone who might be watching. Which no one was.

John did not call for her to come in, as usually happened; instead the door opened on its own, swinging gently inward. Rose considered this oddity for a moment, then walked cautiously inside.

The moment she was past the open door hands appeared and relieved her quickly but quietly of her tray, putting it aside and then grabbing her firmly about the waist and pulling her swiftly behind the cover the door provided. Before she could even form a surprised cry very newly-familiar lips had covered hers and were kissing the breath out of her. John's smell and touch and the feel of his body were suddenly all around her, and she melted against him with a whimper he gladly swallowed.

They kissed quietly, sweetly, both instinctively working together to make no sound until John finally rested his forehead against hers, panting as noiselessly as possible.

"Rose Rose Rose Rose Rose..." he whispered, silly and smitten.

"John John John John John," she whispered back, working to keep in a delighted, adoring giggle.

"I so dearly wish you could have been here when I awoke this morning," he said, hands restless on her back, face glowing. "Doesn't seem fair that we can't spend all day in bed after what we discovered last night, does it?" Rose abruptly wanted to cry with the sweetness of what he was saying. "Seems like our right, people like us..." he murmured.

Rose's brow furrowed gently. "People like what?"

John just smiled, looking down a little shyly. "Did you get any sleep at all?" he asked.

"Barely a wink," she sighed. "It's going to be a long day."

His eyes took her in with a quiet hunger. "For more reasons than one," he murmured.

She nodded at him, looking a little dazed, already feeling the pull.

"Really, you can't stay here long," he said, causing Rose a brief flash of hurt and confusion, until he clarified: "I'll ravish you."

Rose smiled softly, wickedly. "Well, that's not much incentive to leave, is it?" She leaned in for another kiss and watched John's eyes stay open till she made contact, staring at her with a kind of helplessness that made Rose blissfully weak with excitement.

A few more minutes of kissing and John pushed Rose back almost harshly. "I mean it," he said raggedly. "You make me lose all self-control. At the very least you'll have me in such a state I won't be able to teach. Even now I'm not going be able to leave this room for...well, a while." He smiled a sheepish smile.

Rose bit her lip, glowing with fondness for him. She could feel their power over each other so keenly it was like a drug. "All right, I'll take pity on you," she said, though she couldn't resist stepping in to add a little grind against him. The knowledge he was starting to harden made her stomach flip and her eyes close.

John's eyes closed as well. "You realize my revenge on you will be swift and terrible."

"Oh, it will certainly not be terrible," she murmured against his lips. "And please don't make it swift."

She gave him one last peck and swept out the door before the need in his eyes could draw her back, had to consciously stop herself skipping down the hall and suddenly understood why people wrote musicals.

* * *

Late that night Rose returned to John's room. She walked through the door he opened for her with a quiet smile, saying nothing, her eyes heavy - she was nearly swaying on her feet, and John knew exactly what she was feeling. He himself was beginning to feel drunk with the exhaustion of not only spending nearly two days awake, but spending those two days churning with bone-shaking emotions at both ends of the spectrum.

Rose began peeling off her outer layers, John silently helping. Their eyes stayed fixed on one another, smiles soft.

Until Rose's outerwear was fully removed, at which point their smiles leapt to full wattage and they launched themselves into each other's arms, surrendering gleefully to kissing, touching, sighing into each other's mouths. Stripping off clothing was done with the utmost haste and the least amount of precision, adding quiet giggles to the sounds they fed each other.

They stumbled to the bed and he was inside her in a heartbeat, her soft warm body under and around him, the slick pressure that clenched him touching everything good and her hips rising wholeheartedly to meet him each time he thrust, bodies animated by joy.

It wasn't long before the sighs and moans turned rougher and more urgent, increasingly desperate noises of reaching for an ecstasy hovering ever closer. Muscles straining, heads bowing or thrusting back, clutching and pushing and fighting for the perfect friction till their inner worlds exploded, letting loose a soaring pleasure that language has never been able to capture.

One party, long and spare and wiry, collapsed and breathing and held close, the other softer and smaller, lost in aftershocks and blanketed by the first.

After a moment John raised himself onto his elbows to look down. "Hello!" he said brightly.

Rose laughed; John beamed. They rolled and teased and reconfigured till they were curled together in a cocoon of warm contentment.

John realized sometime afterward that they were both asleep roughly two minutes later.

* * *

Their subsequent days and nights continued in just such a fashion: Rose coming to John's room after everyone had retired, staying with him until the last possible moment before the sun rose, stealing kisses and endearments in the morning when she delivered breakfast and any other time they could throughout the day.

The days passed slowly, the nights blissfully. Rose refrained from showing John too many more "modern" moves, not at all sure how much further she could go before really making him raise his eyebrows. There were furiously-aroused times when she could barely keep from taking him in her mouth or when she was wild to feel his tongue between her folds, but she didn't want to press her luck. Besides, John was unknowingly teaching her the virtues of slow, and gentle, and reverent—of devoting one's attention and time so thoroughly to a task that its effects were electrifying.

Sometimes they met in the middle: it wasn't long before Rose couldn't resist kissing him open mouthed, and soon kissing with tongues was one of John's favourite things. He'd want to do it so long she'd grow impatient, desperately needing him to move on to more. He'd linger and savour, teasing out admittedly glorious sensations, igniting everything within her and even though she felt she'd explode, she didn't often have the heart—or the operating brain cells—to hurry him along.

And apparently she had ignited adventurousness in him in more ways than one.

They would lay awake nights talking about the stars, postulating whether man would ever visit them, what they would find there. John wanted to visit faraway lands, climb mountains, go to Africa and photograph wild beasts. Rose listened with both a quiet joy and a private sadness. She wished she could tell John what he was-the man with her would be nothing but awestruck and overjoyed, forever thinking himself the luckiest, most blessed being ever to exist. But simply having him come back to being the Doctor...that wouldn't be the reaction, of course. She wished she could split the difference, bring him back without awakening all the world-weariness and stifling guilt that came with it. A perfect balance hovered somewhere in between. A perfect, unachievable balance.

Then again, if John were loosed on the galaxy with his innocence intact…he'd still lose it eventually.

But moments and thoughts like that were few—the remainder was magic. When they weren't physically trying to climb into each others' souls, they talked and teased and gazed and giggled and drowsed and curled together and basked.

This went on for one week.

At a week and one day, John's breakfast was delivered by someone else.

* * *

The knock on John's door caused the customary smile on his face. "Come in."

Turning to bestow said smile upon his visitor, he blanched when the visitor was not who he expected. A lanky brown-haired girl, all elbows and knees and terrified silence, entered instead, keeping her head down as she walked quickly for the breakfast table.

"Where's Rose?" John asked without preamble.

"She's not available, sir," came the timid reply. John still hadn't seen her face for the shadows she kept it in. "I was told to deliver your meal instead."

Alarm shot through John's limbs. "Is she sick?"

"No sir, I don't believe so, though I wasn't told a definite reason." The girl hurriedly set out the breakfast implements with a surety and speed Rose never achieved.

John got a brief glance of her flaming cheeks and felt suddenly certain of something: "What reason is being talked about?"

The girl's head dipped even farther as the colour in her cheeks grew impossibly livid. "I—I don't know what you—"

"TELL ME what's being said," John ordered, the sinking feeling in his stomach taking him over.

The girl paused, finally seeming to find some backbone. She straightened and presented her young freckled face to him. "The talk amongst the staff says she's been dismissed, sir." Her eyes didn't leave his; they clearly said "_You know why._"

John's face was now the one that coloured.

Without another word he strode from the room. When he was gone the girl supported herself with one arm against the breakfast table, slumping and sighing in terrified relief.

* * *

In the school's back corridors, Rose was on her way to the servant's entrance, escorted by the thoroughly-disgruntled head Housekeeper. In this case said entrance was to be her exit—she'd been directed to leave immediately. The Housekeeper was making no secret of her irritation at this entire matter: not only had the morale of the staff been thrown into complete chaos, watching one of their own lose her job without the slightest advance notice or consideration, but the interruption of her daily duties to take care of it had her mightily put out.

Rose had trouble sympathising.

She endeavoured to keep her head high amidst the occasional gawking looks and the whispers. It seemed no one had any compunction about staring straight at her while the gossip flew.

Except one person.

When Matron saw her from a distance, the older woman's eyes flashed for one long moment with a kind of shocked paralysis. She then cast them firmly to the floor and did not raise them again as she passed.

Rose knew his "scandal" meant nothing to her in the grand scheme of things, existing as it did in a time she wouldn't even inhabit for much longer. She was panicked about getting in touch with John, frantic to figure out how not to lose track of him, but concern about her "reputation" didn't even register.

Nevertheless, it didn't stop her face from contorting into a look so furious that by all rights the Matron should have spontaneously burst into flames.

* * *

John's angry stride was carrying him toward the door to the kitchen. He could hear behind the doors that he was approaching a clucking henhouse.

He burst in on a group of women preparing and clearing breakfast trays, and his presence immediately stopped all conversation and activity. "Where is Rose?" he boomed.

The gathered staff of women all gawked at him, stunned at the arrival of this newly-insane professor. One of the older women found her voice the quickest.

"Mister Smith, you must leave at once! I'm afraid the Cook doesn't tolerate anyone but—"

"And I'm afraid I don't care," John cut across; the woman looked thoroughly shocked. "If you tell me what I want to know I'll be gone. Where is Rose Tyler?"

No one offered anything. They seemed unsure of consequences of responding, but also...strangely united.

"How long ago did she leave?" he demanded, looking angrily between them all. "Will she still be gathering her things, or has too much time passed for that?" He waited a long but impatient moment. "_Well?_"

He looked around wildly and spotted Jenny. "You! You're her friend. She would absolutely tell you her plans!"

Jenny's look was nothing like it was the night they'd spoken before, the night Rose had run off after the light in the sky. Her eyes were wide and bizarre and her smile was oily. "I'm sorry, sir, I'm afraid I haven't a clue," she said, in a way that made John's skin crawl. Abruptly she stepped closer and inhaled deeply through her nose, causing her nostrils to flare disturbingly. John couldn't move away from her quickly enough.

Faced with a stonewall, John was about to unleash a fresh tirade when a young ginger woman spoke.

"She'll still be at the servants' quarters, sir." The woman's expression held something like compassion. "It's not been even an hour since she was dismissed, but I don't expect packing will take her long—she hasn't many things."

John met her eyes with an expression of pure respect and gratitude. The woman nodded her acknowledgment with a polite smile, and the kitchen door was left swinging as John flew back out it.

* * *

Conversation in the kitchen erupted again with the force of a hurricane, words like "shameless!" and "never seen the like!" audible within the maelstrom. A group of scandalised older women focused on the ginger woman.

"What possessed you to tell that perverted old sod where she'd gone?"

Ginger woman looked at them. "Did _you_ think there was anything going to stop him?"

The women had no response, but it didn't prevent them resuming gossip amongst themselves. Ginger woman stood and left the fracas, abruptly unwilling to listen.

Evidently no one else recognized the look of a man in love.

* * *

John was nearly out the school's front doors when the Headmaster casually stepped in front of him. He smiled tightly. "A word in my study, Mr. Smith?"

John clamped down on his instant impulse to tell the Headmaster to get the bloody hell out of his way. "Certainly, sir," he forced out.

Moments later, perched tensely on a chair in the Headmaster's study, John watched the Headmaster arrange various items on his desk. "I'm sure you know why you're here," he said. "I further assume you've already been informed that Tyler has been dismissed."

John nodded again. "Am I?" he asked numbly.

"No." John looked up in surprise. "Your skill and your record have always been exemplary, and I would be hard-pressed to find your equal." The Headmaster's look became something frank, almost fatherly. "This isn't the first time in the history of private schools that something like this has happened, and it certainly won't be the last. I would be a fool to release you for a…lapse of judgment." The Headmaster seemed to think he was giving John a comforting absolution. John merely felt his jaw tighten.

"Of course," the Headmaster continued, rising to pace, "I would like Farringham to avoid a reputation for Masters intimidating young women into behaviour that will lose them their positions and character; to do so makes it most difficult to get servants."

John was momentarily speechless. "You think I _coerced_her?"

"Or perhaps the little strumpet set her cap for you, hoping to become with child so she could force a marriage out of you." He frowned at John. "Mr. Smith, I've been at this post a very long time and have seen a great number of things. You may presently be blinded by emotion, but in my experience once your head has cleared, you'll see sense. Situations like these boil down to one of those two cases, nine times out of ten."

John fought to contain his temper. "This is the one leftover time," he ground out.

The Headmaster smiled thinly at him. "In whatever case," he went on, "there is to be no further social contact between you and Tyler, on or off the school premises. In future I would advise to confine your attentions to barmaids and shopgirls. Do I make myself clear?"

John's jaw was tight enough to grind his teeth to dust. He could only nod.

The Headmaster moved back and sat at his desk again. "That will be all."

* * *

John's trip to the servants' quarters to find Rose proceeded as planned.

From moment to moment, depending on his thoughts, his heart alternately leapt and sank and rallied and despaired. What would he do to find her if she was already gone? She'd have to leave him some clue, wouldn't she? He had no idea where she was going now, or if she even _had_ anywhere to go. Even if the school no longer permitted her to see him she'd find a way, wouldn't she? Or would she expect him to do the chivalrous thing and find a way to come to her? And…she would _want_him to come to her, wouldn't she? The scandal wouldn't have put her off him? Maybe she'd be thinking instead about her future and her character and…John's head felt ready to explode.

He arrived at the servants' building and momentarily tried to decide if it was better to just run up the stairs full throttle and check every room for her, or to try and learn her room's location so as not to waste time and energy. His choice was made when a young resident of the property appeared. Easily influenced by a bit of sternness, she readily gave up the information. John took the stairs two at a time, feeling a bit of a bully.

The door to the indicated room was half-ajar; John shoved it open. There Rose sat on one of the two small cots, holding a packed bag, staring into space. His heart leapt and then stopped; he waited for her reaction.

Rose turned and cried out upon seeing him, launching herself from the bed and into his arms. He caught her and clutched her to him with every bit of strength he had, holding her as she sobbed in relief and feeling grateful tears prick the backs of his own eyes.

"You found me," she wept, "You got here in time. I didn't know how long they'd let me wait, or how I'd talk to you if they made me leave, or—"

"Shhh," John said, rocking her back and forth half to soothe and half to celebrate the feel of her. "I'm here. And as long as you'll have me I always will be."

Rose pulled back to look at him with fresh tears and amazement. She looked overwhelmed and beholden and as though she was holding herself back against some thought. Her lip began to quiver. "It's my fault. Someone must have seen me leave, I wasn't careful enough—"

He kissed her to stop her berating herself. She kissed back ferociously, tasting of tears.

When they paused for breath he looked at her tenderly. "Rose...do you really not know how much I love you?"

Rose went completely still, staring at him open mouthed, and a kind of laugh-sob escaped her.

For one bewildering, horrible minute she looked both over the moon and as though he had just dug her grave.

Her face suddenly gained a heartbreaking intensity, one so concentrated he abruptly suspected there was something he didn't understand. "Remember this, never forget it," she warned. "I will _always_ love you—and _want_ you—more than _any_ man I will ever meet in my entire life." She gazed at him as though trying to memorize him. "No matter _what_ happens, I am _never_taking that back."

John kissed the breath out of her, lifting her off her feet, feeling her admonition that he remember the moment to be singularly unnecessary.

* * *

A brief while later and they were still there, John sitting on the floor against the bed with Rose sat between his legs, her back to his chest, his arms folded around her.

"The Housekeeper should be back any time now to walk me to the gate," Rose murmured finally. "I'm sure it won't do for you to be caught here." She looked forlornly over her shoulder at him. "We have to leave."

"I know," he said, still looking straight ahead. "I wish you'd tell me where this friend of yours lives."

"I wish I could," Rose covered, "but she's showing me such a kindness by letting me stay with her, I don't want to drag her into it." She didn't really know what the TARDIS would do if she let John in, but it didn't seem like part of the plan.

Suddenly she felt John's body straighten. "What day is it?"

"Thursday. The twenty-first."

He moved so he could face her better. "Meet me tonight?"

Rose nodded. "Where?"

John smiled. "The village hall."

Rose grew concerned. "But what will the Headmaster—"

John shook his head. "Don't know, don't care."

Rose's heart squeezed painfully. "John..."

"Rose...it's my choice," he implored her. "Just...meet me?"

The look in his clear eyes vanquished her. "Yes." John's grin went to full wattage.

"Right. Now before you go to...your friend's, I want you to visit a shop in the village, called Foster and Co. I'll have called ahead, and I'll need you to pick up a package for me. All right?"

"All right," Rose nodded in bemused confusion. "You going to tell me what we'll be doing?"

"No," he beamed. "It's an adventure."

Rose's heart squeezed again and she hugged him, hard, finding the understatement overwhelming.


	11. Chapter 11

_If you're interested in seeing the dress described in this chapter you can see it at _regencydresses. com /images /view /917 /1913titanicyellblujpg. html _(only take out the spaces in the URL, of course - won't let folks include real links, evidently)__. In my version I left out the little fur accent on it because I'm too much a product of my era to find real fur on anything cool. :P Add it back mentally if you want._

_FYI: I hated writing the last (well, next-to-last) bit in this. Ha. Ted.  
_

* * *

John may have purchased the package Rose picked up for him, but it didn't seem to be technically _his_.

Foster and Co. had turned out to be a women's clothiers; Rose stood before a TARDIS mirror and looked at herself in the dress John had bought her. She didn't know how fancy a dress this was for the time period, but she had certainly never felt more dressed up, or pampered, or romanced.

It was made primarily of a light blue silky fabric with a darker blue patterned fabric in the middle around her torso. It was made to look as if it wrapped around her and so had a v-neck, lace over her shoulders but no sleeves, and the skirt fell in silky, diagonal tiers. There were tiny strings of pearls accenting the shoulders and around the bodice. Rose had found some accessories to go with it – shoes, little earrings, a matching hair comb with a feather.

She simultaneously rejoiced and fought back the panic that now always lurked at the back of her mind, determined to keep it from spoiling the moment.

She felt like she was being hurtled down some rapids with no way of steering herself. Events were happening so fast and felt so powerful, she didn't know how she'd stop them or slow them even if she wanted to. Which, God help her, she didn't. As long as they'd both been stationed at the school, things had seemed containable. Alone with him at night, everything had felt so perfect that she could believe it was all destined to work itself out somehow. But now the container was broken and she didn't know where things might spill. Reality had tromped in and reminded her there was no such thing as a guaranteed happily ever after.

She was clinging to the hope that things would right themselves once the truth came out, that no matter what the Doctor's initial reaction to his human activities once he came back, they would come out okay like they did at the end of every other adventure. But usually that meant physical survival, which currently seemed like nothing compared to the kind of survival she wanted this time.

She thought occurred to her—and not for the first time—that she didn't even know for certain he'd remember any of this once he came back; it was one of the many things he hadn't had time to explain. It was an outcome she knew would be more torture than relief. There wouldn't be anything for him to object to or change his mind about...she'd just have it all to herself to mourn, grieve, secretly lose her mind over and never recover from. That is, if she could even keep it to herself forever, which she frankly doubted she could.

But if he _did_ remember and yet didn't want to continue what they'd started...the thought made Rose nauseous with dread.

Rose felt a tickle in her head that she thought meant the TARDIS liked the dress; Rose figured she probably knew who'd given it to her. She wondered if, due to wandering around in Rose's brain, the TARDIS knew the whole story.

"Can you make sure this all turns out all right?" she whispered to the ship. "That he and I stay together when this is all over?" She couldn't keep herself from adding: "Together...as a couple?"

She felt a comforting sensation that was somehow non-committal, like someone stroking your hair quietly when they don't have an answer for you.

Rose now wished she hadn't asked.

* * *

The village was draped in bluish moonlight when Rose arrived. John waited amongst some trees, wearing a dark gray suit, coat and hat as handsomely as anyone she'd ever seen. She smiled: the clothes of the period were far more formal and complicated than anything the Doctor would ever choose on his own (though they were equally as severe), but she couldn't say she didn't enjoy seeing him in them. There was a masculinity to them that intensified the force of his own. Besides, seeing a handsome man all buttoned up and proper always gave Rose pleasantly wicked thoughts about rumpling him up.

And he was _such_ a handsome man, she thought. Alternately goofy and sweet and then powerful and intense, with a sexual edge that was sheer force of nature. When he was with her he didn't act as though he wasn't aware he was sexy...he acted as though he was so confident of it he needn't give it another thought. The effect was knee-weakening.

And there he was, pacing like a nervous teenager on prom night. Over her.

She smiled privately. Really, what did he have to be nervous about?

Then the smile dropped: wait, what _did_ he have to be nervous about?

She felt a brief surge of fight-or-flight adrenaline, despite simultaneously experiencing her usual reaction to his presence: feeling pulled, wanting his attention on her.

The latter won out. She walked quietly forward into a spot of moonlight so he could see her.

He turned in his pacing and stopped when he spotted her, his face lighting quietly. The weather had warmed enough that night that Rose could get away with wearing only a wrap, which she held open to show him the dress.

John's look melted into a kind of awe, and Rose's heart fluttered happily. He moved quickly to her and put his hands on her hips, avidly feeling and admiring the flow of the fabric over her body before sliding his arms around her back and pulling her close.

"And I thought it was pretty in the window," he murmured.

"Thank you," Rose said sincerely. "No one's ever given me anything this beautiful."

"I could say the same about you," he whispered, breath warm against her lips before he kissed her.

She sighed and wrapped her arms around him as well; warmer out or not, the weather still wasn't exactly balmy, and his body heat was a welcome thing. "So what are we doing here?"

"Well, Miss Tyler, if you're amenable, I should very much like to escort you to the Village Dance."

Rose looked over John's shoulder and saw the Village Hall not too far away, lit up from within, people coming and going from the open doors. She'd forgotten the dance was tonight.

She stared at him, concerned and confused. "You want to take me somewhere public?"

"Very much."

"But the Headmaster...you'll be dismissed."

"I have it on good authority I won't be," he said, "because I resigned."

Rose felt like the rapids she was riding just sped up. "Resigned? Just like that?"

John bowed his head with a sigh. "I know it's been less than a day since this all happened, but my mind's been running furiously. One thing I've known since the moment the Headmaster forbid me to see you was that...it was never going to happen. And not only that...I don't feel the same about my position as I did before all this. So it didn't take me long to conclude that I can't stay there. I felt leaving on my own was better than courting the school's wrath by disobeying."

Well yes, that made sense, but…the fabric of their plan was unravelling. Rose's fight or flight was back. "What will you do?"

He smiled gently. "Right now, I plan to take you to a dance."

He was deflecting; deflecting meant he had something to deflect _from_. "You know what I mean."

He stepped back and took her hands. "Yes, I do."

"Not to mention, those people hate us." Rose was becoming short of breath.

"Rose." John brought her back to the present with the simple use of her name, in that way that only he said it. "Believe it or not I don't want to scandalise anyone. I'm not trying to prove anything—I just want to _show_ them. Show them how proud I am that someone as bright and full of life as you would have me. No one in there really understands what's happened, and some may never do. But it's certain _no one_ will if we act the way they expect us to, if we keep hiding in the shadows, behaving as though they were right to disapprove."

Rose worked hard to stay in the moment, not to panic until she heard something worth panicking about. Right now, all he was saying was that he wanted to take her out in public and show everyone he chose her without reservation. She had to admit, there wasn't much to dislike in that plan. She felt herself getting lost in the deep tones of his voice and his adoring look.

"We don't have to go in if you don't want," he continued. "But all I really want is one dance in front of everyone I know with the woman I love. I want that freedom, because we didn't do anything not to deserve it."

Rose had been reduced to just trying not to swoon. The sincerity in his voice and eyes was one thing, but it was the mischievous grin beginning to form that sealed it. It was a Doctor and Rose thing to do, really, flaunting a stifling convention imposed by a judgmental group. It was almost like freeing a civilization from a dictator.

John seemed to read her mind—he leaned in and spoke conspiratorially. "Really, if you're honest, after all the fear and worry we've been through, can you truthfully say there's _no one_ you'd like to rub it in to?"

Rose's own grin began to form. After the despicable way she'd been treated ever since she got here, all because of her station? Only all of 1913.

She offered him her hand and her most playful smile. "Lead the way."

* * *

The Village Hall was small, modest and adorned with simple party decorations. It also contained nearly everyone Rose had ever worked for at the school.

Conversation didn't stop when they entered but it definitely experienced a lull, only to flare up again in the form of murmurs and hushed excitement. John smiled at her, looking relaxed as he took her wrap. Rose tried to adopt the same air, but couldn't help looking over the people around them. Some looked disbelieving, some looked luridly entertained. Mixed in with that was a healthy dose of disapproval.

But Rose began to notice other things, like the fact that no one was dressed quite as resplendently as she was. She wasn't overdressed, but all the other women's apparel was more subdued and everyday, the colours more drab and earthy, more...ordinary. No one else wore anything quite as ethereal, or as fairytale. The layers of her skirt wafted gracefully as she walked, and the fabric gave off an iridescent shimmer in the low light.

Compared to the others, Rose absolutely glowed.

Rose realised in a rush of understanding that John had made an impeccable choice for her dress, and that he had neatly orchestrated a show-stopping entrance for her. He'd presented her like a princess; she felt her throat constrict with emotion.

On impulse she turned to him, stretched up and gave him a heartfelt kiss on the cheek, purposely ignoring what anyone's reaction might be. John looked quietly pleased and his eyebrows questioned. "Thank you," she whispered, hoping every bit of her gratitude showed on her face. From the soft glow that lit John's eyes, she supposed it did.

They crossed the room to choose a table. John, for his part, seemed to be enjoying himself more and more as the moments passed. He smiled widely and said hello to people, even people Rose was sure he'd never have talked to at the school. The more taken aback they seemed, the more openly friendly John was. The high point came when they encountered a small group of other professors—Rose stiffened as John gently steered her in their direction, but his sidelong grin at her made her go along anyway. The professors stopped in their collective tongue-clucking as they approached, their dissatisfaction evident.

"I say, old man—" one of them began.

John interrupted by thrusting his hand out to shake, acting friendly and oblivious. Rose nearly choked when he opened his mouth and pure Northerner flowed out, accent and all: "'Ey up, chuck, you all right? Belter of a party!"

Rose managed to hold in the loudest of her guffawing as they turned and made their retreat, but there's no way the men could have missed her shoulders shaking; John looked as though he'd never been more entertained in his life.

A man at the front of the auditorium called for everyone's attention. "Ladies and gentlemen, take your partners...for a waltz!" John looked at her with his eyebrows raised in invitation. Rose smiled and nodded— when she was very young one of Jackie's boyfriends had taught her to waltz by letting her stand on his feet as he danced. She'd never liked the bloke that much, but now he didn't seem so bad.

They reached their place on the floor and the music began, and they started to circle with the others. Rose unconsciously closed her eyes and bit her lip, working to remember long-ago lessons. When she opened them again she found John smirking at her in amusement.

"Hush," she hissed.

"Didn't say anything."

"No, but you were thinking."

"I can't think either?"

They fell into an irresistibly enjoyable bickering. John altered his steps, sped up and slowed down, smiling like a loon every time he confused her and got a rise out of her. Rose retaliated by whispering filth in his ear that distracted him to the point that they collided with an older couple. They worked to keep from giggling as they apologized but were not overly successful. The older couple's stern looks only caused more snickering once they were off again.

Teasing and giggling soon became gazing and drifting on each other's smiles, interrupted only briefly when John met the eyes of a ginger woman standing off to the side, looking at them with a calm kind of approval. John nodded at her in acknowledgement, smiling gently. When Rose asked John what it meant he explained quietly, and Rose met the woman's eyes with her own thankful look.

Despite John's request for only one dance, one soon became two and then three. They only stopped when John spotted the Headmaster at the door. They didn't know if he'd been notified of the situation and had arrived to prevent them furthering the school's scandal, and they didn't stop to find out; they merely grabbed their things and slipped out a back door into the night.

Out in the chill they walked with hands clasped between them, until John impetuously stopped and swung her into his arms. Rose giggled and smiled at him.

"You're right, that was an adventure," she beamed.

John's eyes gained a kind of hopefulness. "It wasn't all the adventure I had planned."

"Oh?"

John paused, then plunged. "I want to marry you," he said quietly.

Rose felt her stomach hit the soles of her shoes. "What?" she breathed. She cursed herself for letting her guard down, for forgetting she'd suspected something before.

"I want to go somewhere where no one knows us and start again," he said, his look loving and intense. "But before that...I just want us to _go_. See the things we've talked about. Roam and explore and make love under exotic skies." His eyes became beseeching. "I've enough money saved that we could do it for a while, at least. Just jump on a train or a boat and end up...anywhere."

Rose had to choke back a laugh-sob at the familiarity of his words. How could anything be so romantic and so tragic at the same time? She should be celebrating, clutching him for joy; he'd just given her the most miraculous option a girl in this 1913 situation could have ever had, sweeping her off her feet like a prince. He was being utterly wonderful, and she should be rewarding him with her elation. Instead she was gaping at him like a fish.

She fought to find a way to say yes to him. Would marrying him be a betrayal when the truth came out? What difference would it make when she'd already dug herself in so deep? What good did it do to dash John's hopes for reasons he wouldn't understand? When the people they supposedly were wouldn't even exist another thirty days or so? Again, that was if he even remembered.

But the travelling...it didn't really matter where they were on Earth while they hid from the Family, but they couldn't leave the TARDIS. Could she put him off of that bit for a while until she figured out what to do? It didn't seem like he'd want to wait—he had the air of someone who wanted to be impulsive and romantic, who couldn't wait for his life to start.

And meanwhile his face was falling because it had been so long and she hadn't answered. "Rose?"

"I'm sorry," she stammered. "It's just...quite a lot to take in, all at once."

The disappointment in his face was heartbreaking. "I thought you'd be overjoyed at this. I thought a trip like this would be everything you'd ever wanted."

"It _is_," she pled truthfully. "You were absolutely right. It's just that—"

"What?" he asked. Rose found she couldn't speak. "What is it?" he asked again. His voice started to shake with emotion and anger. "You don't even have anywhere to _live_ and you still won't say yes to me?"

Rose put her head back, trying to stop the tears. She felt like she would die from this; even if she said yes now, her hesitation had done its work. "John," she said, her voice breaking, "I promise at some point you're going to understand this..."

John's disbelieving reply was cut off by a collective scream from the occupants of the Village Hall. He and Rose turned as one to the source of the noise, which was followed by the hoarse bellow of someone who sounded very much like Jeremy Baines: "We asked _for SILENCE_!"

Rose knew exactly what was going on. She would not have believed the night could get worse. And yet it had.

And then it got worse still.

John ran without hesitation toward the Village Hall, his Doctor-like instincts apparently active. Rose screamed after him in horror: "John, NO!"

He didn't stop. Rose took off in pursuit. She didn't reach him until he was already inside, staring in confusion at a room evidently held hostage by Baines, Jenny, a man she recognized as Mr. Clark and a strange little girl holding a balloon.

"Ah! If it isn't the man of the hour," Baines said, his face lighting unpleasantly when he spotted them both. "We have a few questions for you, Mr. Smith."


	12. Chapter 12

John quickly scanned the scene inside the Village Hall: the dance's former celebrants were huddled in tight, obedient little clumps around the room. Jeremy Baines, a man he knew was called Clark and Rose's maid friend were assembled at the front, each holding an identical baffling-looking object—they looked like green, legless lobsters, folded to a perfect right angle. A little girl with a red balloon stood incongruously near them, as well as several men dressed like the most ragtag scarecrows he'd ever seen.

Somehow Baines and Co. had frightened everyone in the place into giving them control, but for what? John quickly decided that just because he wasn't a professor anymore didn't mean he couldn't pull rank on Baines like one. "Baines, what is going on? What do you mean by barging into a peaceful gathering and scaring a group of innocent people?"

Baines' looked supremely pleased at the position of power he clearly held. "From everything I and Family of Mine have observed," he purred, ignoring John's questions, "it seems you're the Doctor."

He heard Rose inhale sharply next to him. He spared her a glance, but needed to concentrate on Baines. "What?" he blinked. "What do you mean? I'm not a doctor. Do you _need_ a doctor, is that what this is about?"

Baines paced forward toward John. "No, you're definitely the man we need, only somehow you've gone quite _uselessly_ human on us, and we'd very much like if you'd stop doing that with all speed." His grin and the tilt of his head seemed utterly wrong.

John began to get angry. This whole thing was merely Baines and a strange assortment of friends being perverse and it needed to stop now. "Enough. You are the only one amused by this joke of yours and you have wildly overstepped the boundaries of propriety. I'm taking you with me to find the Headmaster to sort you out."

"Oh, I believe the Headmaster is going to have very little to say on the matter," Baines smirked, glancing coyly over his shoulder to an empty spot in the room. John couldn't see anything there besides some dust on the floor. A frisson of talk and dread ran through the rooms' other guests, confusing John further. He also couldn't understand why his orders were having so little effect, particularly given Baines' reactions in the past: he'd reduced the boy to a quivering wreck on occasion.

"Fine, if that's the way you want it, I'll take you to school myself." John reached for Baines' arm.

Baines jumped back as though it was a game. "No sir! I'm afraid not, sir! It is us who will be taking _you_, sir!" he intoned with glee.

The guests were becoming restless. "SILEEEENCE!" boomed Clark suddenly, sending them into a spasm of hushed panic.

"You don't have to scare everyone," Rose said suddenly, defiantly from John's side. "If you don't want to talk to any of them why not just let them go?"

Baines' eerie gaze trained on Rose; John immediately looked down to check on her. He realised she looked not in the least confused nor surprised, merely tense and on guard, ready to fight. He didn't understand why but it made him love her even more and so, _so_ glad he'd met her, and none of it made sense and he remembered his heart was being broken and bewildered just a few moments before.

Baines, for his part, looked as though Rose had presented him with the perfect gift. "Oh, but if I let them go, I couldn't do this." He turned and held his object as if it were a gun, aimed at random and then actually fired what looked like a line of green light from it. It streaked across the room and made contact with a woman who screeched and exploded into a shower of glowing green particles. The crowd erupted in fresh terror, Rose screamed and looked utterly stricken and Baines wheeled on her with an obscene glee. "Please, PLEASE make another suggestion! Your last was EVER so helpful!"

John stared in horror, having absolutely no idea what to make of what had just happened: a woman had existed one moment and turned into green vapour the next. He felt powerless and stupid and shamed as Baines turned back to him. "Now then, Doctor, isn't it worth it to you to change back to save all these simple cattle?"

He tried to conceal his shaking. "Change back into _what_?"

Baines' smile became something of a grimace; he turned to the rest of his group with a feigned look of long-suffering. "Oh, the limitations of a human brain, how it tests the patience," he said. "Mr. Smith, we'd like you to stop being human, and we'd like you to do it RIGHT NOW!" He screamed the last, startling the guests again.

"How can I stop being human?" John yelled. "What else would you have me be?"

"A Time Lord, of course!" said the little girl. "It's the only way Brother of Mine is going to live forever." John looked to her and recognized just a second too late that Rose's maid friend was no longer next to her. Rose screamed beside him and John whipped around to see the maid friend had an arm around Rose's neck and that strange gun pointed at her face. John suddenly knew a sharper, keener fear than any he had ever experienced.

"I've only just realised," crowed the maid friend, steering a struggling Rose toward her assembled group. "This must be the one the teacher was looking for this morning." She looked at him with an eerie smile to match Baines'. "She's his illicit _lover_."

"Ah, perhaps that's the way in," mused Baines. "Shoot the girl. Perhaps if his human heart breaks, the Time Lord will emerge."

"Hurt her and I WILL KILL YOU!" John roared, the threat real enough to touch.

"Change form and I WON'T HAVE TO!" Baines roared back, relishing every syllable.

John's brain spun with possibilities: tackle the maid. Grab one of the guns. Find a distraction. Taunt Baines till he's angry enough to make a mistake. None were foolproof enough to guarantee Rose's safety. John's hands clenched hard at his sides and he washed over with hatred. He flashed back to the "toughening" days of his youth, and fixed the assembled group of antagonists with a glare that would have cowed anyone else in the universe with enough sense to pay attention. "I don't think you appreciate," he intoned quietly, "how very well-versed I am in making people _sorry_."

"Is that so?" Baines crowed. "Well, you've certainly made the people here sorry, haven't you? Landing in this time and place, fleeing from a threat you must have known you could never outrun, your very presence proving fatal?" His sing-songy cadence turned malicious and measured. "Does it seem terribly _familiar_, Doctor?"

John didn't know why Baines' words felt like they were crushing his chest. He only knew one thing, and that was that he couldn't look at Rose, for Rose, who'd had her arms curled upward against her front ever since she'd been grabbed, was reaching slowly and as unobtrusively as possible into the bodice of her dress, and he knew he couldn't draw attention to it. He somehow knew she had an idea. He somehow wasn't mad with fear that she would do something to get herself shot. Somehow this all seemed surreally familiar. If there'd been time to do, he might have wept with confusion.

"A foray into human lust, Doctor? I'd not have expected that of you." Baines was still grandstanding. "Was that a fringe benefit of the experiment, finding a way to forget your sordid past in the arms of a lesser being? Or was it self-debasement, Doctor? Frantic, messy couplings with a creature barely out of the mud to let you know you gone as low as you could—"

Suddenly Rose brought forth a mystifying object of her own: it was a short gray tube with a blue light at the end and which a strange whirring noise. She aimed it at the maid's weapon which suddenly glowed red and produced sparks; the maid shrieked and dropped it, shaking her hand against what was most likely the pain of a burn.

The next happened so quickly for John that time reverted to slow motion.

The maid dropped her arm from around Rose's neck and Rose charged forward, free. Baines glared at her viciously and raised his weapon. John's feet moved without any conscious thought and he threw himself at Rose to tackle her out of the way. He did, and when Baines fired he felt something lightning hot graze his upper arm. He expected to die but instead landed hard on the floor half on top of Rose, listening to her grunt of impact and feeling himself start to sweat and shake before the pain hit and he let out a cry that sounded faraway to his own ears.

He rolled onto his back with a strangled whimper and watched hazily as Rose sprang into a crouch and shot her arm out to aim the small gray tube at Baines. Baines' weapon was aimed at her. It was a standoff.

"Back away and leave," Rose ordered.

"HA!" yelped Baines. "Sparring with the ape creature, what SPORT!"

"RIGHT NOW!" demanded Rose.

"How do I know that pathetic thing can even harm me?"

"It can do anything I want it to do to you, mate." Rose's lip curled and she sneered with impressive malice. "And right now I'm feeling _very_ creative."

John watched as a blurry maid leaned toward am equally blurry Baines, cradling her burned hand. "It's true, Son of Mine, that thing is a weapon. We can't risk your fragile human body when we're so close to our goal."

Baines considered a moment. "Fine," he said calmly. "We'll regroup."

Rose kept the object trained on them. "Everyone, out of the hall!" she ordered. The villagers didn't need to be told twice, scattering in panic toward the exits with a maximum of commotion.

Rose stayed calm and focused during the noise, turning slowly toward John. "Let me see your shoulder," she requested softly, coaxing him to roll over onto the opposite arm. John couldn't see what she did but the sight of it made her hiss quietly. "It's a nasty, um, burn," she whispered, "but you'll be okay with some help." She sniffed loudly and he looked at her foggily; her face showed she was fighting off tears. "I'm so glad you're not dead," she whispered fervently.

A shuffle of movement from the group and Rose's gaze and arm shot back to them. "No one moves until we're gone. Follow any of us and I'll shoot you on sight."

"We _will_ meet again," intoned Baines villainously. The sight of the motley family and their scarecrow bodyguards swam and tilted in front of John's view as Rose helped him to his feet and together they staggered out the door.

* * *

John's legs would barely support him as Rose tried to push him down the path to the school as fast as he could manage. The searing, screaming pain had become all that existed. His brain and body wanted to escape it and kept insisting on tugging him under.

"Please don't faint," Rose pleaded. "We have to get back to the school to get help and there's no way I can carry you."

John nodded drunkenly, concentrating on the fall of his feet, one after the other.

They lurched along in silence for several beats, until Rose finally spoke. "I want you to know something," she said. "I never meant for you to think I didn't want to marry you—I do. I'd love to. I'd marry you every day for the rest of my life if you wanted."

John's fog cleared remarkably as he looked down at her. "Then why didn't you say that?" His tone came out equal parts defensive and beseeching.

"Because...because I couldn't agree to the travelling, because there are a lot of considerations you don't know about, and—"

"And why didn't you tell me _that_ and...whatever considerations you felt there were so that...we could work it out together?" John was beginning to pant a bit now; talking was taking it out of him.

"Because...I wasn't allowed to."

"Not allowed? By whom?"

"Frankly, by you!"

John fought to wrap his head around where the conversation was going. "Rose...you're not making...any more sense than—" All of a sudden John remembered something he'd thought was important.

"You may have been scared back there...but you weren't confused...by what Baines and his 'family' were doing," he stated quietly.

He felt Rose tense against him, watched her bite her lip. "No," she said finally.

"You knew what it was about."

"Yes."

"You had a strange weapon like they did." She nodded. "And the reason you didn't say yes to me...one has to do with the other?" She nodded again. John felt even dizzier. He closed his eyes and dropped his head back. "I need to know what's going on," he stated, listening to his heart pound and dreading the fulfilment of his request even as he made it.

"I'm going to explain everything," she puffed. "Now this has happened, I not only can but...I have to." She stopped and shifted his arm across her shoulders, redistributing his weight; John could see sweat on her forehead in the moonlight, and even through the fog and the confusion he hoped her dress would survive all the exertion—he really _was_ delirious.

"But I'll do it after we get to school," she finished, resuming their pace. "You need the nurse and I need...well, I need to fetch something."

* * *

When John Smith stumbled into the infirmary, his tall form supported by a much-tinier Rose Tyler, Joan had a myriad of new information to digest at once.

John's state (_pale, clammy and weaving_), Rose's dress (_chic, up-to-the-minute, outrageously expensive and impractical. It also made her a vision, even though she'd had to sweat in it and soil the hem with dirt from the road_), John's accompanying dark suit (_they must have gone to the dance), _John's suit jacket carried by Rose and her wrap tied around his arm. Joan thought perhaps it had been used to stem blood flow but there were no stains to be seen on his pristine white shirt sleeve (_she had absolutely no idea what to make of that_).

"What on earth...?" she exclaimed, moving quickly to help Rose guide John to a bed.

Rose helped him lie down, focusing on John exclusively as though she didn't want to have to look at Joan until absolutely necessary. John, for his part, didn't seem to have enough energy left to acknowledge anything; he let out a moan of relief the moment his back made contact with the mattress and seemed to lose consciousness immediately. Joan began carefully unwrapping the shawl from his arm.

Rose sat on the bed next to John and finally turned to Joan, her face as businesslike as she could make it. "There was an...incident at the dance," she said, her voice unsteady nevertheless.

"You mean a fight?"

"More like a...standoff." Joan's look still asked questions. and Rose tried to elaborate. "Jeremy Baines and a..." She seemed to falter for a description. "..._strange_ collection of others barged in and started making demands that didn't make sense. They were all focused on John for some reason, and they each had some sort of weapon I'd never seen before, something like a pistol, and Baines fired a shot that grazed John's arm."

Joan looked sidelong at Rose then nodded without speaking as she pulled the last layer of shawl away and her hand flew to her mouth. This was not the scrape of a stray bullet: John's flesh was not burned, it was _melted_. Where it still existed, that was. In other places it seemed to have evaporated entirely, leaving a gaping crater that went down to a level of mangled muscle and cauterised flesh. That must have been why there was no blood—the cauterization had stopped it.

"What would do this?" whispered Joan in horror.

"I don't know," said Rose. "Like I said, it was a weapon I'd never seen before." Joan got the vague feeling Rose was choosing words carefully so as not to lie.

John squirmed and moaned softly and absently, only semi-aware. Joan took charge: "Cover him up with that blanket, and use some pillows to raise his feet about 12 inches—he's most likely going into shock. I'll get him something for the pain." She strode to a medicine cabinet and prepared a morphine shot, loading the strongest dose she dared give. Rose's eyes never left John's face as the shot was administered, and only when his body finally relaxed back against the sheets did Rose seem to let go of some of her tension as well. She still seemed very much in combat mode, however, ready to guard and defend.

Joan stared helplessly at John's wound. "I've no idea where to start with this. I've never seen anything like it." Her mind sprinted through possibilities. "I suppose I'd best treat it as a burn, after we clean it." She looked at Rose, and came to a decision. "Rose, come with me, I could use your help."

Rose looked at her as though she'd asked her to swim the Atlantic or something equally impossible. "I have to stay with him," she insisted.

"You can safely leave him for a moment, it won't take long." Joan's tone left little room for argument. Rose stood and followed her into an adjacent room where supplies were kept.

Joan closed the door to the little supply room; off Rose's puzzled look she explained "You can never tell what a patient in John's state can hear, and I wanted to talk to you privately." Rose stared with barely-disguised impatience as Joan prepared her words.

"This may not seem at all the time to talk about it, but I wanted you to know that I was not the one who informed the Headmaster of your and John's relationship."

Rose's eyes widened momentarily, but quickly hardened again in impatience. "You're right, it's not the time at all."

"I promise you, it's leading to a point." Joan wrung her hands. "In case you were curious, as I understand it was the Headmaster himself who discovered it. He's a supremely early riser and I believe he saw you as you were—" The words wouldn't come easily. "—leaving his...quarters."

Rose seemed to have become engrossed in that bit of information despite herself; she nodded quietly. "I did assume it was you," she said. "But you're John's friend. I'm sorry I doubted you."

"Oh, don't be. Your instincts were quite on target." Joan's smile was tight and painful. "I'm wildly jealous," she said, her voice a near-whisper.

Rose simply nodded, exuding a very genuine understanding. She accepted Joan's moment of honesty with a grace that let Joan regain herself. "I've not known John long, but I do consider him a friend, and frankly when he was with you I'd never seen—well, I was going to say I'd never seen him happier but the truth is I'd never seen him happy," Joan said simply. "He had always seemed to be suffering under this invisible weight, dwelling in some self-imposed land of self-denial. I was always happy when I could lighten the load but you..." her words drifted off as she looked at the small, golden thing in front of her. "You relieved him of it entirely." She paused again. "He loves you, truly," she concluded, "and that's nothing to be interfered with."

She watched as Rose inexplicably fought tears.

"But I know even more about your relationship than that, because..." Joan shook with nerves as she reached into her apron pocket and presented John's fob watch. "Because this watch talks to me."

Rose's eyes became huge, her former angst forgotten in an instant. "When did you…?"

"That day we were all in John's study, discussing his journal. You touched it as you were dusting, and suddenly...suddenly it sang out across the room to me, with this music that, unbelievably, never reached my ears." Joan's feelings of awe and fear were suddenly replaying throughout her body. "It told me to take it and keep it safe. At first I was certain I'd gone mad but as I stood there, pretending to talk to John after you'd left and absolutely quaking, in a few moments...it had _comforted_ me." Joan felt vaguely felt the same disbelief she had when it happened. "When John turned his back I took it from the shelf and kept it with me. It's been talking to me ever since." Her gaze became weighty. "I know everything, Rose. All about you and the Doctor."

Rose stared at Joan as if _she_ were the alien. "Do…do you know about the Family?"

"Yes. And why you found it necessary to hide from them. Can I assume they've found him, and that it was their...otherworldly weaponry that produced his injury?" Rose nodded, lips pressed tight.

Joan sighed, digesting the fact that an hour of need they'd hoped would never come had indeed done. "I told you all this so you'd know you can be candid with me, share anything you need to help us protect John. Well—" she interrupted herself, "the _Doctor_." She looked at Rose uncertainly. "I really would like to help, however I can."

Rose's expression turned sheepish and guilt-stricken, but thankful. "We have to get him to open that now," she sighed, gesturing to Joan's hand.

Joan nodded. "I know."

"I have no idea what he'll think when we drop all this on him, or if he'll agree to change back." Rose's lip began to quiver, her voice dropping to a teary whisper. "And I have no idea what will happen to us if he does."

Joan opened the door, put a hand on Rose's shoulder and guided her gently back toward the infirmary. "We'll do it together."


	13. Chapter 13

"You think I'm _what_?"

John's face was as blank as a fresh sheet of paper. Rose didn't blame him, really—she knew how it felt to go through learning that aliens are real.

She spoke gently and carefully. "I don't think, I _know_ you're the spaceman from your dreams. Those dreams aren't made-up stories, they're events from your life, your _real_ life. You're from a planet called Gallifrey and you're different species from human, called a Time Lord. You call yourself the Doctor, and you travel through time and space. The Family we encountered back there, they're not mistaken—you _have_ been hiding from them by taking human form. The disguise was so important even _you_ couldn't know who you really were. And now, you have to change back into your Time Lord self so you can stop them taking over the planet."

His eyes narrowed in anger and what looked like hurt. "This isn't funny in the least, Rose—I would have thought you much more mature. I'm sorry if whatever you want to tell me is unpleasant but I'm afraid messing about isn't going to relieve you of the obligation. I have a right to know."

Rose paused to make sure she had her composure. Disbelief, lack of understanding—those she'd expected, but his air of betrayal she hadn't and it was hitting her where she lived. She knew she had to settle herself in for the long haul—they'd barely even begun.

She felt Joan's hand wrap around hers and had to fight even harder to keep back tears.

"I'm afraid it's true, John," Joan said calmly. "Once you've had a chance to digest it I can tell you how I know, but I do know."

Rose decided that of all the looks she'd ever seen on the Doctor's face, the one he now held was her least favourite: a kind of disbelief so intense it belonged on the face of a person who was reconsidering everything they'd ever thought they knew about another person, questioning that person's sanity and the advisability of having them in their inner circle. She wanted to punch him and cry, repeat as necessary.

At least John was also peering at Joan as if he'd never seen her before. Rose felt better, not being the only one.

It was such a shame. When John had woken a few minutes ago he'd been nursing a pleasant buzz. Fuzzy short-term memory had made the edges nicely blurred and he'd managed to relax. Now his agitation seemed to have overridden any of the morphine's euphoria and he looked ready to spring from the bed and escape.

"You're helping with this perverse little joke?" he accused the Matron. "What has _happened _toeveryone all of a sudden?"

"I'm afraid it's not a joke."

"It's certainly not the truth!" he exclaimed. "There is an earthbound explanation for what's happened tonight and if either of you actually believe anything you've just told me, you'd really best examine yourselves. Though it may not be entirely your fault—women's constitutions can't always handle events of this nature. It's got to be the excitement of the moment, the fright from a serious injury or having been at the whim of madmen—it's made you flighty!"

Joan glared flatly. "John, in our entire acquaintance when have you _ever_ known me to be flighty?"

John had no reply, and Rose had to fight off a smirk—Joan was quite an ally to have.

"That's exactly what I can't understand," John said with an honest abandonment, and Rose no longer felt like smirking. "You're one of the most soundly-balanced, level-headed women I've ever met and you..." He turned to Rose and simply stared as though he didn't know where to begin. "Before today I would have trusted either of you with my life and now...now you're telling me this...this..." His mood turned to rage in the space of a heartbeat. "...this BOLLOCKS!" He turned fiery eyes to Rose. "_This_ is what you had to tell me? _This idea_ was what was going to keep you from marrying me?" Out of the corner of an increasingly-teary eye, Rose saw Joan flinch just slightly. "Is this seriously your notion of letting me know what's going on?"

Rose abandoned victimhood and rose to her feet in anger. "What about what you saw back at the dance?" she rallied, ignoring tears. "Guns that shoot green light? That woman who _exploded_ and disappeared?"

"I don't know what I saw in there!" he shot back, flinching and gritting his teeth as his agitation moved his arm. "And neither do you," he managed to grind out. "But whatever it is there's a perfectly reasonable explanation!"

"Oh, but I _do_ know what I saw back there. Those green lights? Those are called lasers," Rose said, not really knowing if that was the technical name—being that they were built by aliens—and wishing for once that the man in front of her would contradict her and go off on a rant about how much she didn't know. "They're useful for all sorts of things—eye surgery, scannin' your groceries, light shows. They use 'em like mad back home, in _London 2010_, where I'm from!"

John looked away as though disgusted; Rose didn't falter. "And what about this, then?" She pulled the sonic screwdriver from her dress, held it up for his inspection. "What's your reasonable explanation for this? You saw what it did."

"I didn't see anything for sure," he sniffed stubbornly.

Rose fought the urge to slap him. "This happens to be yours. You built it."

Joan's eyebrows rose in timid curiosity. "What is it? What does it do?"

"He calls it a sonic screwdriver. And it does just about anything, really. It's practically his magic wand."

Joan's eyes widened—the explanation seemed to set her brain off in a flurry. "If it can do anything..." she began, nodding at John's now-wrapped arm.

Rose's heart leapt at the same time she wanted to kick herself in the head. "Of _course_! _Stupid_!" She succumbed to the urge to smack herself in the forehead with her palm, then extended said palm toward John in amazement. "And you even showed me the setting!" She set about pushing the sonic's buttons furiously. "Sorry, m'just not used to bein' in charge of this thing..." She found the setting she wanted and knelt down beside the bed, starting to unwrap the bandage. When the sonic waved close to it John recoiled. "I thought you hadn't seen what this thing did," Rose taunted. John scowled.

Joan came closer for a better view while John watched uneasily. "What are you going to do?"

"Give you some undeniable evidence," she replied. Soon she had the wound uncovered and upon seeing it, John sucked in a horrified breath through his teeth, his face gone ashen.

Rose realized John had been out when Joan had peeled away his shirt sleeve. "Weapons on Earth don't make wounds like this, do they?" she asked softly. John's Adam's apple moved as he gulped. Rose placed a hand atop his and to her surprise he turned his hand to interlace their fingers, gripping hard. "John...if I can heal this, would that make you believe me?"

If she hadn't been watching for it, she wouldn't have been able to detect his nod.

She sat back, aimed the sonic and discreetly gulped as well: she didn't have the world's keenest memory for settings.

Rose pressed the button and the impossible happened: John's flesh began to replenish itself—very slowly, but perceptibly—starting with the tissue at the bottom of the stomach-churning chasm in his arm. Strangled muscle became smooth and sleek, and the other desiccated tissue plumped and grew red with blood. John choked in a huge breath of shock and wonder—Rose stopped immediately. "Does it hurt?" John shook his head, apparently the only communication he could manage.

Rose carefully restarted the sonic and the three of them watched. Joan's face was a mask of fascination, her expression nothing short of child-like. John's pallor managed to deepen, despite the fact he was regaining blood flow. After a minute or so Rose paused in her not-yet-finished task to let them all catch up to what had happened. "Well?" she asked avidly, a little breathless. "John?"

John's reaction was not one Rose would have ever predicted.

His eyes filled with tears.

* * *

"I'm not real," John rasped hoarsely, his first words in what seemed an eternity.

"You are very real," Joan said quietly from his bedside, his hand firmly cradled in both of hers. She patted his knuckles gently. "I have the evidence right here in my hands."

John's voice was rough from crying; Rose had held him for endless minutes while he sobbed out confusion and fear, simply rocking and holding him, letting him purge it. When he had finally quieted she had turned to retrieve the sonic and resume healing the arm, but somehow the prospect of her doing so threatened to revive his sobbing all over again. It was decided that Joan would finish the task while Rose retrieved a maid's dress to give her something fresh and more suitable to wear—John wasn't the only one looking wan and wilted.

Healing the rest of John's wound with the sonic—not just healing it, but _erasing_ it—was a breathless thrill Joan didn't expect ever to forget. The idea that medicine might one day incorporate something like this form of magic...it was humbling just to be a part of it.

But now she performed one of the other duties of nursing: sitting with a man feeling staggered and betrayed by fate. "None of my memories are real," John spat bitterly. "Events I thought made me the man I was, that I thought shaped my morals and deeds...none ever happened. I'm nothing but a story!"

Joan's look did not scold, but implied she knew he was wiser than that. "John...we're all of us just stories in the end."

He pondered that a minute, then looked around wretchedly. "So is that what this is, then? My end?"

Joan realised she knew the answer to this question as though she'd been studying for it, which, in a way, she had. "Decidedly not." She turned in her chair to face him and straightened into a posture that expected his attention, which he gave. It was sweet and sort of rueful, how the attitude of a man in his position wasn't all that dissimilar to a boy on the first day of school—feeling suddenly smaller than he'd thought he was, needing something maternal to steer him to solid ground.

"The Doctor found a very clever way to talk to someone who might protect him, in this case me. He's been doing so constantly for weeks. Frankly, I think you should be hoarse by proxy." She didn't wait to see if he smiled at that, though she thought it a shame if he didn't allow himself. "I've seen many of the Doctor's past adventures, his moods..." She fought back a shiver, which she fancied John did not miss. "He's nothing to be taken lightly," she warned.

She made sure John was looking at her squarely before she continued. "This is nowhere near your end—the Doctor is eternal, nearly immortal. He is a light and a force that refuses to be snuffed out, mostly because his power reaches too far for anyone to best him. He knows the stars like a family; he watches over them like a parent. He can feel the turn of a planet beneath his feet. He can _guide time_. When he's not righting chaos he's bringing it, and when he's not saving civilizations he's damning them. He routinely beholds unspeakably ancient wonders not glimpsed by anyone save their creator, and when he does he's only the only one who remembers their language. He's merciful yet grants no quarter. He loves until it's the death of him and grieves as though he invented it. He gives all of himself to everyone _but_ himself, and it's a habit I do wish he'd break. He needs love and companionship like air and yet he holds his breath like a stubborn child. He will never run out of wonder or tenderness or joy or adventure. He is the universe's fallible, capricious and only true protector."

John was speechless for a long, reverent moment. "That's terrifying," he breathed finally.

Joan nodded, gazing into middle distance. "Isn't it?" Her focus came back to the moment. "So don't whinge to me about stories. I've been carrying that one in my head for weeks and it's not even mine."

John laughed softly despite himself, his startling blue eyes brimming, and graced her with a smile of thankful, intimate affection that made her chest constrict. She had learnt so long ago she mustn't read into things, and yet doing so now seemed irresistible...

And then John's eyes moved incrementally to look over her shoulder and she knew Rose had appeared as she watched the inevitable transformation of John's face. Even confused and hurt and mistrusting, he couldn't stop what she did to him.

Joan abruptly felt like thin air.

She couldn't look at him after the revelations of the previous moment, after the pouring out of a soul she'd carried for him. She could barely whisper to beg their pardons as she stepped outside.

* * *

"Will she be all right?" asked John, as Rose took Joan's former seat.

"I expect so." Joan had made it clear she did not want to be followed outside. Even though Rose suspected Joan could survive nearly anything, she would have liked to have gone with her for at least a moment, given her some comfort she didn't doubt Joan needed.

John sat up, beginning to reject his invalid's position since he was, after all, healed. She looked at John's completely healthy skin through the ruined shirt sleeve of what should have been a dead man. She shook her head; the sonic never ceased to amaze her.

"How does she know so much about… this Doctor?" John asked, almost grudgingly.

This time Rose pulled the watch from _her_ apron pocket, an apron belonging to a different maid's dress but still, an arrangement of fabric that had become very familiar. Being near him in this particular dress—while he wore his chosen costume—was also very familiar. So much so that she almost wished she could take back all the revelations and have everything stay in place. Almost.

She ran her forefinger along the etched case, feeling the usual eerie humming. "The Doctor stored everythin' about his Time Lord self in this watch."

John's struggled to understand. "How does one store one's _self_ in a watch?"

"Trust me, m'not the one to ask. You're the only expert." He flinched a little when she said that but Rose was not about to back down from such statements. He needed to understand his role in things. "But it's definitely there. You can…feel it's more than a simple object. At least I can—and Joan, of course. For yourself, you put a perception filter on it so it would never seem like anythin' worth noticin'."

He took the watch from her warily, rolling it over in his hands. "You're right," he said finally. "It certainly doesn't seem like anything special." The corners of his mouth began to twitch and tug downward.

She put on a hand on his to keep him focussed. "When it's time to change back, all you have to do is open it."

He looked at her in alarm, hastily put the watch on the nightstand. "Does that happen if _anyone_ opens it or just me?"

"Just you. Joan's opened it a number of times, apparently. When she does it only makes it talk louder."

John stared at it a minute, then abruptly looked her in the eyes. "What do you want to happen?"

"Me?" she sputtered. "Well...I don't know that what I want really matters."

"It matters to me. A great deal." His voice finally seemed to be taking on some strength. "What are we to each other, when I'm this Doctor?"

She looked down, abashed. "S'a very complicated question."

"Are we in love?"

She swallowed and nodded, not looking up. "We do love each other, yes."

His voice went soft and cautious. "But are we lovers?"

Rose very much hated the answer to this question. "No."

John looked outraged. "Why on earth not?"

Rose gave a startled laugh that was almost teary. "I ask m'self that every day."

His brow furrowed. "A few weeks ago I had one of my 'spaceman' dreams," he said with a touch of irony. "You and I were in a basement of some sort, with a battle going on outside and...and a table." His cheeks began to flush, and from the look on his face Rose knew the memory was arousing him. The idea made her ache to respond and very, very ready to cry. What if she never again got to act on that look?

"We were teasing each other," he continued after a pause. "You were trying to get me to prove I could dance, only it wasn't really about dancing...and I decided I wanted to put you in your place so I kissed you, and I pushed you back onto this table..." The dark hooded cast to his eyes was now unmistakable; it was all Rose could do not to squirm in her chair. "I was sort of...rough with you then, more demanding than I've ever—" A flash of bitter realization crossed his face. "—than I ever _remember_ being with a woman before. Any woman today would call me an animal, but you..." His look became more enflamed than ever. "You very much liked it."

Both of them were breathing more raggedly. Rose couldn't decide if launching herself at him would be the perfect thing to do or the worst idea ever. "Sometimes 'animal' can be good..."

His eyes were glittering. "Did that happen?"

"No," she admitted, feeling excitement leave her as heartbreak moved in. She tried a rueful smile. "Hopefully you were dreaming of the future."

John frowned, frustrated and disbelieving. "You mean this Doctor actually doesn't want you?"

"I don't think it's that," she said. "I think it's just that...he's afraid to let it happen because he's been hurt so bad, and he feels guilty for things and responsible for so much, being the last of his kind and all. And he'll outlive me by so long—"

"I don't want to be that man," he interrupted urgently.

"But you are," she said, almost a whine.

"I'm not _now,_ not while I'm like this." He leaned forward, urgency becoming fervour. "There must be a way I can stay like this. I can't lose you."

"I can't lose you either," she said, voice breaking. "But the Doctor is the only one who can keep the Family from destroyin'… really, _everything_. And we may not lose each other. Maybe now the floodgates have been opened, he won't want to go back."

"But that's a 'maybe,'" he argued in frustration. "That's not good enough!"

"No, it isn't! But we don't really have a choice."

"There's always a choice." His voice rang with that authority it had. "Do you really want this Doctor back?"

"_Yes_," she breathed, her eyes squeezed shut in a desperate release of emotion. "I've been carryin' all this on my own for so long and I'm so _tired_. He can fix it, he can fix anythin' and then we can go back to travellin', livin' among the stars."

His face shuttered closed. "You love him more than me, then."

"Don't be daft!" she exploded, making him blink in surprise. "You're the same man, you've always been! Everythin' I see in him I see in you, two sides of the same coin. He's the one with an encyclopaedia in his head and the alien-fightin' power but...you're the one's made every dream I ever had for the two of us come true." He stared at her in a kind of respectful wonder as she felt her tears finally spill onto her cheeks. "You're just him if he ever let me in."

John moved to sit sideways on the bed, pulling Rose into his lap and holding her. Rose melted into him gratefully, sniffling.

After a moment: "You said there's a chance I won't change my mind about us if I go back," he said softly. "So I assume that means I'll remember everything that's happened?"

"I dunno, may just be wishful thinkin'," she said, closing her eyes and absorbing his warmth and his smell. "Y'never told me one way or the other."

"I never _told_ you?"

"_No_," she said, warming to his outrage.

"How could I not?"

"Well, there wasn't time but you can _also_ be a right prat about that stuff. If I ever see you again I plan to smack you."

John chuckled and a minute later Rose joined him, feeling the absurdity so keenly she couldn't not. They both held each other tighter, a united two taking a small respite from the world.


	14. Chapter 14

Joan burst in suddenly, so focussed she didn't even blink at John and Rose cuddling. "We've a problem."

"What a surprise," grumped Rose.

Suddenly a bright green flash from outside changed the complexion of everyone in the room. A not-so-remote explosion followed; John and Rose blinked at each other in alarm before Rose scrambled off his lap and both hurried to look.

At the window all three stared at the bizarre green fire burning its way through the village. Another blast streaked the sky and a new explosion rocked them, adding its fire to the first's.

"They're attacking the village," Joan murmured. "I was told most everyone evacuated after word spread of what happened at the dance, but still..."

"Who told you that?" Rose asked.

Joan's shoulders squared. "By a professor who was helping arm the boys for battle." She nodded toward the window. "It seems now we have two problems."

John was aghast. "Battle? Against whom?"

Joan opened the window and pointed to the grounds below. At the outskirts stood Baines and the little girl, watching the school disturbingly as a veritable army of scarecrow men amassed behind them.

"They're preparing to attack, to force you out or their own way in." Now they'd been made aware of it Rose could hear the sounds of bustling and activity below, feet on stairs, equipment being hauled.

"Where are they getting all those _men_?" John boggled.

"I don't think they are men." Joan eyed the scene below as though it were a lynching. "I think they really are scarecrows, animated in some other-worldly way...which means we don't know their powers," she concluded uneasily.

"If the school's in danger why don't they just evacuate the boys?" Rose demanded.

"Oh, honour and all that rot," Joan erupted, exasperated. "Defending this hallowed bloody institution. Some of the professors became very angry and retaliatory once they learned of the headmaster's demise..." She looked to Rose and John for confirmation. Rose thought back, puzzled, till she remembered Baines' comment and the dust on the floor. The same realisation lit in John's eyes. "We weren't there when it happened," Rose said, "But yes."

"They're using _boys_ to avenge his death?" John charged. "That's monstrous."

"I could not agree more," Joan sniffed.

"So it's a two-pronged assault..." he continued, wincing as another green streak flashed past. "Two forms of pressure to get me to surrender." The Earth grumbled loudly as the blast hit. John went a little pale. "This is all because of me," he murmured.

"S'all because of _them._" Rose's protective instincts were fierce.

"Still...there's nothing for it." Rose's heart couldn't decide whether to break or to soar as she watched him decide.

Joan looked at him carefully. "You're going to open it?"

A nod while staring at middle distance. "Yes."

Joan processed a moment. "Once you do, how long will the change take?"

John blinked at her. Rose shook her head. "Dunno. Took about ten minutes t'change the first time, but I don't know if changin' back is the same."

A silence settled over them. Presently Joan extracted a ring of keys from her apron and began removing one. "I'm no expert but I think you have a few minutes before anyone's likely to attack—I don't think either side is completely in place. I'll go downstairs and see if I can delay any declarations of war—some of the professors will actually listen to me." She handed the key to John, nodded toward the infirmary door. "Lock the door after me, for some privacy, so...no one sees anything he's not supposed to. Just...let me know what you need me to do once it's done." She strode to the door and exited, John drifting behind her to lock the door once it closed.

He did so, pocketed the key, turned and strode toward Rose, hauling her up by the upper arms and kissing her hard. Rose made a surprised sound, which slowed John down not at all. Blasts were going off outside, the reports coming through the windows, concussing the air around them.

"There isn't—there's no time," Rose gasped.

"There has to be," John growled. "If I'm a dead man, I demand my last wish."

Rose threw her arms around his neck and pulled herself against him as hard as physics would allow.

_Oh God, this might be the last time, the last time, oh God oh God..._The thought taunted her over and over. She didn't know how they were going to undress when she was totally unwilling to let his warm, wet mouth lose contact with hers. Clever John, he pulled back just enough to attack the buttons on the front of her dress, keeping up his bruising kisses all the while. He fought the top of her dress off her shoulders...and stopped completely cold, mouth hanging open, at the sight of her small, lacy bra.

"What?" Rose gasped. She looked at herself—oh. "S'what I wear in my time," she explained hastily. "I just couldn't make m'self wear one of those hateful corsets under that pretty dress."

John seemed to have lost all sense of haste, hypnotised. "This is all you wear? Every day?"

Rose nodded, seriously beginning to enjoy his reaction despite the hovering background tension. She slowly brought the rest of her dress down over her hips, revealing lacy bikini panties. John groaned helplessly.

"What were you going to say if I saw you in this?" he croaked. "If we'd found a place to be alone?"

"Hadn't thought that far," Rose admitted. "Maybe I would have just left the room and come back naked."

John stepped closer, touching the lace over her breast in tentative amazement. "You show me this just before I'm supposed to change back? You're trying to kill me." He sounded completely serious.

Rose smiled sympathetically even while her lip began to tremble, thinking again about loss. "Maybe it'll be incentive for the Doctor," she tried. Suddenly her lip stilled, gaining confidence as an idea occurred to her. "In fact...I'm going to give the Doctor every bit of incentive I can think of."

He looked at her in wary fascination as Rose curled two fingers underneath John's waistband and pulled him against her.

* * *

John could feel in Rose's kisses that something had changed. Something about her was more sensual, womanly, predatory. Less worried about pleasing and more...sure she'd do. Her lips caressed his with more honest hunger than he'd ever felt. Her hands slid over him with a fresh, desperate possessiveness, stroking and unbuttoning and fighting fabric away. It felt ravenous and heady and suddenly like he was very, very new here.

Fiery adrenaline flooded him, making his legs weak and he felt a sudden need to be in control. He backed up to the nearest bed and pulled her onto it with him. She planted her knees on either side of his hips as they bounced and rose above him in those wicked bits of lace and strap she called undergarments, looking down at him with a wanton need. He abruptly realised all he'd done was put her on top.

Something in her eyes suddenly made him feel there was no hiding from her. She could see right through him, always could, see him as a man, with all a man's wants and thoughts, past any gentlemanly pretensions to the hot, sticky core of what drove him.

She was taking him someplace he hadn't been, and he was cowed and intimidated.

He was also so damned hard he thought he would burst.

What if he couldn't keep up where she wanted to go? What if he disliked it, disliked _her _once he saw her there? What if he proved himself weak and disappointing?

Then he remembered his own voice: _I want to hear _all_ your ideas..._

He remembered his room door opening at midnight and her staring up at him, having run through the cold and the dark to be with him.

He remembered: no time left.

He remembered she loved him.

He let go.

He saw her mouth turn up and the pupils in her soft brown eyes dilate as she detected it happening. He watched her catch him.

Then he jolted as Rose ground herself slowly against his unyielding erection, head falling back and mouth falling open as though she'd finally done something she'd been desperate for. She did it again and again, ratcheting him and herself higher and higher. He gulped and hung on as she moaned and writhed like a woman possessed, trying to block out the noise of the blasts outside, spellbound by her reaction to his body when he wasn't doing a thing.

She fumbled blindly with the buttons of his trousers and he helped, focussing her frenzied hands. They cooperated to bare his hips and his legs and his fat, straining penis, which Rose immediately took into hand, stroking it reverently. She watched him more closely than she'd ever done. He knew she didn't need to study him that way to discover what he liked—she knew most of it already. He realised she was watching him react because she liked it, that it was arousing her. She was drinking in his every gasp and breath like it was fuel for a flame inside her.

His heart galloped for a couple of beats. They had something in common, then.

Suddenly she scooted back onto his legs and leaned over him. John's eyes went saucer-like as she nestled his penis between her breasts, pushed them together tight around it and began to move herself up and down. The underside of him moved against her breastplate and the pillowy softness of her breasts cuddled the sides, sending shocks of pleasure through him as they caught the underside of the head on each upward stroke.

John's mouth hung open as helpless, heaving breaths escaped. She knew he was gawking. "Do you like that?" she murmured. "Do you like the way it looks?"

John could only nod, too busy watching to speak. After a minute he itched to hold her breasts himself, to urge them harder against him and when his hands hovered near hers she readily gave him control. He shivered to watch _her_ watching it happen; she stared as the head of his penis emerged and disappeared between her cleavage; sometimes she breathed out little moans of excitement. If he hadn't been so regularly and thoroughly satisfied over the last week, he likely wouldn't have lasted.

A fresh blast of alien fire startled him and caused him to lose his rhythm and grip. Rose's eyes briefly showed her own fear and urgency, then she moved away from him and down, her haste redoubled. Her face hovered right over his erection and he suddenly had the strangest feeling.

"Rose, I—"

Whatever he'd intended to say was lost forever, dispelled by a disbelieving cry of epic proportions as she took his erection into her mouth.

John gasped and flailed like a caught fish until Rose's hand firmly stilled his hip. He'd only barely regained control when she suddenly began moving her mouth up and down him, sucking and tightening and tongue dragging and he cried out again, equally as loud. He heard faint footsteps on the stairs and the muffled sounds of boys calling commands to each other and instinctively knew to silence himself but it took everything he had. He felt a frisson of guilt at not protecting the boys yet and disbelief at Rose's actions and ecstasy and utter complete total Neanderthal abandon.

Being inside her was sweet but _this_ was a path to insanity. Indescribable wonderful slick how could it be that she wanted to do this how did she even know and OH HER TONGUE moving and flicking oh there THERE OH OH OOOH dear God could he ever repay her in kind? Would the Doctor know how? Could the Doctor satisfy her like she was doing to him? What if he climaxed, he couldn't possibly, not in her... what would she think do say? And he—OOOOOHH her tongue swirling, mouth tightening and pulling and his hips bucking upward and then shock of cold air AAAAGH crying out she's gone, where had she—

—YES, ooohh, yes, sweet comfort and heat as she sunk down around him. His eyes finally opened and he stared at her newly-foreign face that he still knew by heart and she was smiling with confidence that was slipping as her excitement grew, oh _that_ face he knew and could do something about and he angled and thrust up in a way that made her stifle a cry just barely and he knew himself again and her but it was all growing fuzzy, too, blurring with passion and need like madness.

And she was grinding and he was rubbing rubbing grinding slipping sliding clenching she was climaxing OH god squeezing and weeping that she loved him and he loved her back so much thrill in his chest and stomach to look at her and feel her and as soon as he thought she was ready or maybe before he flipped them and thrust back into her, hard and slick and tight and he had to touch her laying his whole body and arms and chest atop of her warm and breasts pressing more more more.

"I can't touch enough of you," he heard himself moan. "Oh God, Rose...I have to touch you, everything..."

"Never leave me," she pleaded. "Never never leave me..."

"I won't," he swore. He raised enough to look into her sweat-damp face, his own face bobbing just inches above hers. He clumsily cupped her cheek with his hand as he continued to move at a desperate rate. "I never will. Even if he does..." His eyes squeezed shut with grief and wild sensation. "...please know that _I_ never did."

* * *

She kissed him fiercely, holding on across his back as his face burrowed against her neck and he pounded so hard against her pubic bone that the vibrations built until she was coming again, quite to her surprise, her body soaring and singing with pleasure as if nothing had informed it of the tragedy its occupant was going through. Against her neck he was grunting and gasping, till he flexed back sharply and stiffened, groaning in wholeness and in despair. Rose clenched her eyes shut against a moment she normally loved, the beauty and thrill of him coming marred by the crushing knowledge their time-out had ended.

They waited together, breathing and joined for as long as they dared, till eventually they parted.

She idly picked up his shirts, and after a moment he reached for her underwear, and together they spontaneously, silently began dressing each other, taking care to right the clothes over each other's bodies, John smoothing his fingers along the silky straps of her bra as he lifted them over her shoulders and Rose closed the clasps behind her back. When everything was replaced they simply looked at each other, each sitting on the bed, taking in this last moment. Everything possible had been said, everything possible had been done. He drifted his face close and nuzzled her, as he'd done before they'd first kissed.

"I love you," he whispered.

She managed a shaky smile. "Hadn't noticed," she teased quietly. He met her eyes with a soft grin of wry approval. "I love you as well, in case I didn't mention," she finished.

He nodded, then stood, picking up the watch from the nightstand then walking from the bed until their lightly linked fingers pulled apart. Rose's heart railed against the action, hated this, hated it like nothing she'd ever felt in her life.

He stood in front of the bed, his fingers poised to trip the latch. Green light kept glowing and fading outside, preceding detonations of faraway destruction. At the last minute Rose blurted: "It's going to hurt."

He smiled wanly. "Can't hurt any more than this moment."

* * *

He was wrong.

The transformation was hell in its sheerest form. Every cell in his body was being stretched until it screamed. He could hear his bones popping like fireworks. He could feel his organs liquefying and reforming. His lungs were filled with wasps and his skin boiled, a thousand marching ants crawled over his eyes. Endless unfamiliar thoughts and facts and sounds and awarenesses assaulted his brain until he was sure he was mad...except he found he kept filing them away somehow and it was all slowly becoming a pattern he recognized.

Aeons before his sight slowly trickled back into being, fuzzy particles fading away like he'd been rubbing his eyes for days. The first thing he saw was Rose perched on the edge of a hospital bed, clinging to the end rail with white knuckles, eyes red and teary with horror. She waited breathlessly for a signal.

He found that every moment of his human experience was intact in his brain. Including the last 15 minutes.

The smell of her and him and their activities was still riotous in the air. Her hair was unmistakably mussed. The sensation of her mouth tight and slick around him was still fresh in his head...

...and every reason he'd ever had for keeping her at arm's length was flooding back into his heart.

He could once again see a billion timelines in front of him, and at the merest glance he could see several thousand in which she died a horrific death in front of him, solely due to him. He could see another hundred or two in which he let something irreplaceable perish, let civilizations suffer untold horrors because he'd chosen her over them. He couldn't decide if those were worse or better than the ones in which she merely aged, becoming plagued with indignities, losing her fire in front of him as nature cruelly stole her faculties. In others she became senile and battled imaginary torments or worse yet, forgot him and their life together entirely.

There were other options, of course—happy ones, full of love. But he couldn't see them for the potential crimes against her far-too-beautiful soul.

He was pulling away from her as surely as if he were on a conveyor belt. He knew they couldn't continue together now, in any capacity. She'd never give up what they'd had, and he could no longer give it to her.

"Doctor?" she whispered. "It's you, yeah?" He nodded. "What—" she ventured tremulously, "what do you remember?"

He stared at her for a long moment. "Everything," he said.

A staredown ensued. He could see Rose fighting so hard to ask him something other than what she was dying to.

He swallowed. "Rose—" he began. But he never finished.

Because she flickered once, then disappeared.


	15. Chapter 15

The Doctor blinked at the space where Rose had been.

He actually pitched forward slightly onto his toes. All the mental momentum that had been going into his next sentence—not that he necessarily knew _exactly_ what it would have been—acted on him as though it had been a physical force. The moment had been so damn big it propelled him into slapstick.

It took several more moments before his brain caught up to what must have happened to her. Not his usual processing speed but he didn't begrudge himself. Every cell in his body _had_ just been rewritten.

He went to the window and looked down to find his theory confirmed: the scarecrow army were shuffling aimlessly away, while the Farringham boys stood up cautiously from behind their sandbags and guns, watching in puzzlement. Baines and the little girl were nowhere in sight.

It was confusing for everyone but him. If he'd been the Doctor before now he'd have seen it coming. Of course, if he'd been the Doctor before now he'd have seen—and avoided—a lot of things.

His chest squeezed unpleasantly.

He went to his former bedside to retrieve the sonic, turned it on and listened to its buzz, once again as rich and full of bone-deep meaning as a native tongue. He scanned the room with it and peered at the readout: all the tracking information to find her was there—it was practically an engraved invitation.

It felt good to be back and it felt awful. A head full of the last few weeks and a soul that no longer matched them. All the things he'd put into motion, that he'd said and done and professed to believe…all had been witnessed by others and set into stone, part of events. He wasn't embarrassed, exactly, it had all just been so…exposed. No big brain leather coat rattling off science terms flash in the pan sleight of hand. Nothing but a man against the world using the same weapons as everyone else, and searching his everyday life for something more.

And John had received his something more—he was heir to all the travel and adventure he could ever have conceived, only he'd never know it.

It was unfortunate. Doubly so that John's innocent, unspoken heart's desire granted was also the Doctor's curse restored.

The thought stopped him a moment; he pinched the bridge of his nose while his eyes squeezed gently closed. He felt as though he'd unknowingly banished his own restored innocence, chucked a free-pass chance at happiness. "Welcome back!" Life was saying, "We kept your pain nice and fresh for you."

Pain that would flare to renewed life soon when he'd be forced to unceremoniously chuck his other doorway to innocence, give back the best gift he'd ever received when he had to tell Rose… another chest squeeze. Back to distractions.

Blimey, re-entry was a right bitch.

He took a moment of silence and homage for John Smith, a man he both was and wasn't. A man whose dreams were big and whose heart was bigger, braver...more resilient than his.

The Doctor felt his bottom lip trembling slightly and he laughed softly against the silliness of his emotions. To John Smith, he thought fondly—had he met him on his travels, the Doctor would have dearly loved to show him the stars.

* * *

Joan was standing in the foyer, brow furrowed as she watched the retreat of the scarecrows, when she heard the footsteps. She looked to the stairs and saw him descending them at a sprightly clip. She stared for a minute until she was sure enough to ask: "Doctor?"

"At your service," he beamed. Oh my—her heart fluttered a bit. She'd sometimes seen a facsimile of that grin when John was around Rose, but now it was different: manic and gleeful and charming and knee-weakening…

…and just a little bit untrue.

His body now seemed too mobile for the stiff layers of clothes it wore, likely to split the knees or elbows at any time due to sheer volatility. Joan blinked, shook her head to clear it. "I'm sorry," she stammered with a smile, "I didn't expect you'd look the same."

He was grinning at her flustered air; to regain her composure she pointed to the makeshift bunkers outside. "They're retreating, did you see?"

The Doctor nodded. "Yes…and they've taken Rose." Joan felt her eyes go wide. "Teleported her somehow," he explained. "The moment I was back, they knew. Dunno why they didn't just take me but it doesn't matter—now they know I'm coming to them and that's apparently what they wanted." Joan marvelled at how different his speech was now: quick and assured and authoritative, without John's defensive air.

She brought herself back to the topic. "How will you find them?"

The Doctor held up the sonic. "Magic wand," he said with a waggled-eyebrow grin. "That and I believe I've been there."

"What will you do when you find them?"

Something in his eyes grew harder while his smile remained. "Make them wish they hadn't taken her." Joan felt a rush of cold goosebumps.

An awkward silence fell as they stood in the hall with boys streaming by them, carrying supplies back to storage. "Well, it seems my work here is over," Joan said finally, hands wringing gently. "Will I see you again? Either of you?" she added quickly.

"Might do," allowed the Doctor. "Never know with me." His smile grew gentler and—dare she say?—affectionate. "You've been fantastic, Joan Redfern," he said. "Epically fantastic." She had no time to prepare as he leaned forward and kissed her cheek, leaning back with that grin already in place.

She blushed and nodded, not looking at him. "It was an adventure I'd not have missed for the world," she said firmly, managing then to meet his eyes.

The Doctor nodded; he turned to go. Suddenly Joan was struck with a feeling that had to be voiced.

"Doctor?" she called, and he turned back. "Don't you dare give her up," she warned. She suddenly felt very indignant, and nothing to be trifled with. She hoped it showed. "You owe her better and you'll do no one any good, her nor yourself."

The Doctor studied her a long moment, a wry smile on his face. "You're a little bit psychic, Joan Redfern," he said, before turning to stride out the doors.

* * *

He hadn't even really looked at the sonic's information before heading to the clearing in Cooper's Field—it had to be where the ship was. Rose had known or at least suspected the Family was there back when they'd first gone. Yet another wave of dread rolled through him: Rose had carried so much for him, and now he was going to repay her with heartache. Joan was right, she deserved better, but now it was too late. And it was entirely his fault, he'd led her on. He'd created the whole situation then let it play out to its worst possible conclusion. He should've known that the feelings he normally kept under wraps as a Time Lord wouldn't be safe behind the control of a mere human.

Yes, he knew the feelings were there, along with sexual urges dragged into being out of the depths of his nature by any number of factors, not least of which his apparently inability to do anything by the standards the Time Lords used to impose. But while he couldn't help having the feelings, at least as himself he could keep them where they belonged. He felt for a minute one sliver of their volcanic nature and shook his head as he walked. A human didn't stand a chance.

He'd reached the clearing. He held the sonic high and pressed the button, causing the ship's outline to flare bright then dim to a soft glow. A door on the side was clearly open. He squared his shoulders, the impending escapade giving him no anticipation, no feeling of adventure, no joy. Only necessity and his ferocious anger impelled him to go in.

_Showtime_, he thought.

He stood in the doorway and called out: "Hello! Couldn't help but notice you were laser-bombing the area so I thought I'd pop by." His voice bounced down the strange bone and sinew corridors of the Family's ship, giving them plenty of warning that he was approaching as he walked in. Obviously the ship was grown, like his TARDIS. He could feel in his head how different this craft was, though, how it wasn't nearly as smart or benevolent as the ship that housed him. Something almost feral about it, animal and ignorant. He knew Rose would be feeling it too; her sensitive nature would be picking it up, and it'd be adding to any fear or discord she'd be going through.

Rose. Chest squeeze. Anger and desolation flared again. He determined the Family _would_ be taking the brunt of this one. "Yoo hoo!" he called breezily. "I've got jammy dodgers!"

He made it to what seemed the main area of the ship and one by one the Family appeared, as though they were oozing out of the shadows. Rose's ex-friend, glaring with gleeful malevolence as she'd never done as her bubbly human self. Mr. Clark, dead-eyed and violent, that eerie little girl. Baines was the last, still grinning his death's head grin.

The Doctor feigned having a good look around. "Nice decorating, very smart," he noted. "I love what you've failed to do with the place."

Baines' eyes glittered at him from across the space. "Doctor," he said with amused satisfaction. "I had always heard you were entertaining in a crisis."

"Crisis?" The Doctor made a show of being amiably confused. "I'm just here to take Rose home." His smile at the end became less friendly.

Baines' head made that odd tilt. "Really? Well, had you counted on her being _here_?"

He took a long stick and used it to push aside a kind of strange, fleshy panel, revealing Rose. She stood on a platform jutting out from a wall, high above some kind of raised ulcer in the floor that formed a pit. She was perched on the very end of it, saved from falling only by a thin line tied to her wrists behind her back, with the other end coming out of the wall behind her. Her weight against the line pulled it taut. Something in the pit sent out ominous vapours. Very Nestene Consciousness.

The Doctor's only reaction was a quick, dry swallow he knew the Family weren't keen enough to catch. "Blimey, this setup's a bit corny, innit? What happen, you always want to be a Bond villain?"

His eyes flicked to Rose's, and found her looking into his face, searching it. He thought maybe she was looking for reassurance, some sign of their old camaraderie, a hint of that breezy shared attitude that life-threatening danger was only a good story waiting to be told later. He sent her a wink and hoped the turmoil in his heart didn't show. From her weak smile, it may have.

Meanwhile Baines was monologuing. "Doctor, I think you underestimate the value of a good pit of Ungunthian Cyclops stomach acid as a means of ensuring cooperation." He reached up with his stick and hovered it around Rose's face. "Especially when dealing with _certain_ captives who repeatedly fail to follow commands." Unexpectedly the end of the stick dropped to Rose's middle and he gave her a good shove in the gut with it, which Rose took with a grunt of surprise.

Two things happened to the Doctor then, one more alarming than the other.

The first thing was expected: he felt his chest heave with anger at the sight of Baines causing Rose pain.

The second occurrence was also physical, centred lower and caused the Doctor an immense amount of shame: his whole body flooded with sharp arousal.

He knew for certain it wasn't a reaction to Rose being in pain—never, never that. But it _was_ a reaction to the guttural sound she'd made—it was nearly identical to sounds he'd heard her make when he was John, when they were together, alone, and he was pushing into her hard and fast because he was close, so close, and her eyes were squeezed shut and her breasts were bouncing frantically—

He clamped down on the images that were hitting him in a full-blown assault. His eyes shot to hers and she was merely looking at him, same as before, so she hadn't detected it. This was impossible, unspeakable. This shouldn't be happening now he was himself again. He was a bloody _Time Lord_, not some shamefully hard-wired ape.

But the arousal was undeniable.

Oh God. He was broken. His ability to bury the feelings had been overpowered. Somehow she'd not only opened the door to those feelings, she'd broken the lock while she was at it.

He realized he'd been silent too long and had to speak before Baines detected any kind of weakness. "Why are you mucking about with all this?" he demanded, ruthlessly forcing himself to be commanding. "Why not just transmat me once you knew I was back?"

"Oh, do give us some credit, Doctor," purred Baines. "You'll hardly be surprised to learn that your reputation precedes you. To have you to here, against us with only yourself at stake…we'd have the disadvantage. But with something to lose…" His gaze drifted knowingly between the Doctor and Rose. "…you have to be careful."

The Doctor didn't even try to bluff with the lie that perhaps what they had, he didn't mind losing. It would be an absurd argument even to these oblivious, grasping dimwits.

Baines meandered closer to the Doctor while staying wisely out of his reach. "I would so like to ask more about your carnal adventures among the apes," he leered, "about the wisdom of attaching yourself so…intimately to something so unrefined and ultimately fragile, but I'm afraid I've become quite impatient for my prize. You have one minute to agree to let us take your life force, before the fair Rose faces an untimely—though delicious—demise."

He gave a terse nod to the little girl, who pulled a lever on a very crude, steampunk mechanism. Rose yelped as the line that held her upright above the pit began paying out with excruciating slowness, angling her body more and more acutely, closer to the pit, closer to giving her no way to keep her feet and avoid falling. And while short, the line would be long enough to let her fall in.

The Doctor looked thoughtful and began pacing. "You know, it's interesting. On the way over here—"

"Doctor!" Rose interrupted him.

He held up a "one second" finger. "On the way over here I literally stopped to smell the flowers. These flowers, as a matter of fact." He stuck both hands into the pockets of his tweed jacket and brought forth two handfuls of freshly-picked poppy blossoms. Despite themselves, every member of the Family stepped back.

The Doctor smiled knowingly. "Yes, you lot—the real you, inside those human shells—have a very bad reaction to these things. Leaves, seeds, petals—just about every part of them." A thought occurred to him; he shifted one hand's worth of petals to the other and burrowed into his pocket again, displaying his find with a smile. "Found a pretty rock, too."

"Those flowers can kill us!" accused Rose's maid friend shrilly.

"Can do, yeah, depending on what I do with them. Question is, what _will_ I do?"

"Do it fast!" Rose yelled, pitching forward alarmingly.

"I do always like to give people a chance..." he considered, before his face became the coldest stone imaginable. "But I've given you plenty."

In two strides he was at the pit, where he dumped the poppies into the acid. Immediately they produced a loud sizzling noise and visible fumes that speedily permeated the air around them. "Fun fact! Combined with Ungunthian Cyclops stomach acid, poppies create a very nasty vapour that strangely enough, doesn't harm humans! Or Time Lords, but that goes without saying." Then with one explosion of fluid movement he slung the rock at the lever, knocking it into the other direction. The line stopped lengthening and Rose breathed a sigh of relief—she was at just about the last tenable angle to keep her footing.

The Family, however, were not breathing well at all. Choking and gagging, they ran for the door, but a quick zap of the sonic slammed it shut.

"We'll die from this!" thundered Clark.

"No you won't," the Doctor dismissed. "However that gas will separate you from those bodies. Little trick Charles Dickens taught me," he smiled. He was at the ship's consoles, fiddling with dials and buttons. "And with just a small rejiggering of your exhaust systems...I can trap you in workings of your own ship." The air in the ship suddenly began moving toward the strange, jagged holes in the walls that had previously been pumping air out—what served as fans on the ship were now sucking it in. Satisfied, the Doctor headed to untie Rose.

With a final shriek the maid suddenly disintegrated in a shower of sparks, loosing the green gaseous creature that had been animating it. It rose into the air but with no physical form left to grip anything, was sucked helplessly into the now-howling vents.

Clark and the little girl had collapsed to the ground, writhing. An alarmingly pale Baines clung to a bony strut for support. "Judge, jury and executioner once more, Doctor?" he taunted hoarsely. "Where will it end?"

"I told you, you're not going to die," the said Doctor shortly. He glanced back contemptuously. "Dying's too good for you."

Baines ignored him. "What was it that pushed you into murder once more, Doctor? Can't stand that we threatened your cheap little—"

"I gave you a chance!" The Doctor turned and thundered. "You had a chance when I told you not to follow me! You had a chance for two whole months to decide to give it all up and go home. You had a chance _until_ you started killing townspeople!" His fury nearly gave off visible waves. "You've had more chances than you ever deserved."

The little girl rolled over with a final gasp and disintegrated, her real form sailing into the vents without resistance, followed soon by Clark. Baines howled with rage, collapsing to the floor and suddenly stilling. A moment later he flailed for something in the shadows.

As the Doctor was busy climbing up and just then reaching Rose's platform, he wasn't in a position to see what Rose herself could. "Doctor!" she screeched.

The Doctor's head spun just in time to see Baines retrieve a blaster and shoot wildly in their direction, a last vicious effort to damage them before his body was gone. Said body turned to sparks just as the shot he'd fired burned through the line holding Rose up, disintegrating it with a sizzle.

Rose screamed as the Doctor lunged forward, grabbing Rose around the wrist and a remaining bit of cord still sticking out of the wall with the other. He strained with all his strength and managed to drag Rose up far enough that he could let go her wrist and quickly grab her waist, a feat which made her shout in alarm. Then his nose was buried in her hair and her body was flush against his side; he could smell her sweat and she was panting and whimpering, and once again the Doctor found himself in dire, shameful straits. He shook with adrenaline that was only half supplied by their predicament, and spared a half a second's thought to be grateful she wasn't pressed against his front to feel how shockingly fast he'd hardened. John had always been a slave to the sounds she made.

"Rose," he panted. "Try—try and calm down..." He knew he was telling himself as much as her.

He concentrated on pulling them up, grunting and groaning himself as he strained. In a few moments he had them standing firmly on the platform again and Rose instantly threw her arms around his neck with a sob of relief. Even if the last few moments of effort and concentration had _not_ largely cleared up the Doctor's problem, he wouldn't have been able to stop himself hugging her back unreservedly, he was so genuinely grateful.

They clung to each other for a long moment until Rose spoke, tears now in her voice. "Doctor," she whispered. "I've—I've missed you _so much_."

The Doctor closed his eyes and relished the feel of her. "I'm sure if I'd known I was gone I'd've missed you too." Rose gave a teary laugh, and the Doctor smiled as she squeezed him tighter.

She pulled back to look at him with shining eyes, full of question and expectation. It was the moment when John would have kissed her, when _any_ man would have done, and the love and relief in her face begged for it.

The Doctor hesitated, just a moment too long.

And Rose's face fell, all the life and love gone out of it.

She turned to the task of getting herself down. The Doctor offered his hand. "I can do it," she said softly.

She was soon down and heading for the door. The Doctor used the sonic to unlock it for her, and then she was outside.

Aside from the destruction of his planet, the Doctor wasn't sure any situation in his life had ever hurt more.


	16. Chapter 16

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:**It's the last chapter, guys. And I've said it a few places around LJ before but I'll say again that as far as my readers are concerned I picked a hell of a time to pick up a second job. Which I did just before I started writing this chapter, so it probably took longer than any other installment, as well as being probably the cruelest one to take forever doing. But the good news is it's a nice long goodbye.

I can't tell you how much everyone's feedback and readership have meant to me. For such a long time in this fandom I just lurked and inhaled everyone else's stories, and it's just been awesome to get to know so many people better through this fic. Big squeezy 10-minute hugs to everyone.

* * *

When the Doctor returned to the TARDIS maybe an hour later, Rose wasn't in the console room or her bedroom or any of a number of other places. After changing into his usual jeans and jumper, he finally found her in the kitchen, sitting at the table with one foot on the seat and a knee curled against her chest, staring down into a warm cuppa.

Her hair was damp and combed back, testament to a recent shower. She wore a soft white tee shirt with some cute Japanese cartoon characters on it and clean, fluffy pink sweats with a phrase that meant nothing to him emblazoned down the side of one leg. He couldn't help the way his heart swelled to see her like this, so much more in her natural habitat than in those maid's clothes. They must have been so stifling for her—the whole experience must have been. His bubbly girl squashed under all that wool and convention.

It was such a crime to have done that to her—he wished he'd never had to do. He wished he could have been present for it all so she wouldn't have had to be alone. He wished... he wanted...

"So what happened?" she asked, without looking up.

The Doctor's jaw tensed. He pulled a chair out opposite her and sat down. "The Family have been...rehomed."

Rose raised her head and an eyebrow. The Doctor didn't want to continue, but knew he'd never get out of it. "They wanted to be immortal," he said a bit petulantly, "I made them that way. I broadcast them." He watched Rose blink incredulously. "The fact that they were gaseous and non-corporeal meant they were easily converted into other forms of energy, including something like a television signal. You do know that TV signals from your planet keep travelling through space indefinitely? Every programme every broadcast is still winging its way through deep space, and will likely never stop."

Rose looked at him inscrutably. "So that's what you did to them?"

The Doctor watched a picture in his head of the Family's last moments on Earth, and felt the echoes of rage. "Something like that."

Rose watched him carefully, then nodded as though she were reserving comment, out of respect. The Doctor didn't try to justify himself—he didn't want to discuss it any more.

An uncomfortable lull ensued.

Something had to be said, and the Doctor couldn't say it. Leave it to a Tyler woman not to shy away.

"I can't go back," Rose said.

"I know," the Doctor said softly.

Her demeanour was composed but her eyes were fiery. "I can't lie to myself like you can."

The Doctor sat up indignantly. "I'd say I'm the one facing reality."

"Then you're thick as shit."

The Doctor's temper flared. He opened his mouth but Rose was on the beginnings of a roll that couldn't be stopped. "I know you think you're _damaged_ and _unworthy_ and all that bollocks, but mostly you're just scared to death of losing me or fuckin' up or somethin'. D'you really think you're not already in for a pound? Do you actually believe if we aren't sleepin' together it'd hurt less if you lost me? Because if you had any brains at all you'd know it'd hurt _more_. If you had any brains at all you'd know you'd never forgive yourself for what you squandered."

The Doctor was shaking with rage because he couldn't explain it to her. He could never translate the _magnitude_ of his fear or his potential hurt into human speech. For her to belittle it made him want to grab her and shake her and scream at her and hold her and cry...

He shoved his chair back and stood. "You're not going to watch me wither and age," he spat. "You'll never have to choose between me and the fate of a civilization."

"How d'you know?" she cried, rising as well. "I could certainly end up watchin' you die." A feeling of dread swept over him as he remembered what he'd never explained... "And _not_ regenerate," she added spitefully. He jaw dropped; she folded her arms. "Found it in the TARDIS library," she goaded. "Were you _never_ gonna tell me?"

The Doctor looked at the floor and clenched his fists. "I'll not be responsible for your death," he growled. "I wouldn't survive it."

"Well, you won't survive me leavin', either," she shot back, and he hated her violently for being right. "And neither will I." He looked up and noticed anguish on her face for the first time. "You want reality? Reality is that you've ruined me for anyone else." Her face crumpled and it was heartbreaking. "And I've ruined you."

The Doctor certainly did feel ruined.

He couldn't find words, and he could feel her waiting.

"M'not going to settle for less than all of you, Doctor," she said softly. He winced and swallowed. "And m' not gonna wait for you to brood and make up your mind." He could hear her voice gaining tears. After a long pause he looked up at her, and the silence between them stretched on, and on, and on. Then in one horrible, time-slowed moment he watched her eyes close as she decided.

"Fine," she sighed tremulously. "Take me h—"

He cut her off with a wordless cry—he couldn't even bear to hear the sentence finished. He shoved the table out from between them and grabbed her, clasping her body to his with an arm around her waist and her mouth to his with a large hand on the back of her head. She caught him and welcomed him and gave back in kind, and together they fought the cruel separation imposed by bones and flesh.

He pulled back to kiss her face all over, to close his eyes and caress her cheeks with his own. "Dammit, Rose, you don't know how I'd feel," he whispered, willing back tears. "You don't know how I'd feel if you died..."

Rose took his face in her hands and kissed his eyelids, and her touch was a medicine. "Then think of how you'd feel if we never really lived." His desperation boiled over and he crushed his lips to hers again.

They kissed and kissed and his hands reclaimed warm skin he knew like breathing. His anguish was nonsensical yet ruling him—he felt as though just by rejecting her mentally he'd given away precious time.

"I love you...Rasillon help me, I love you..." he whispered helplessly, over and over.

He felt Rose smile beneath his mouth. "S'about time you showed me how much."

He let out a little gasp-laugh and was amazed to feel himself actually smiling, for the first time in what seemed like days. Suddenly the tension was gone. He looked at her with a crooked grin. "Be careful what you wish for."

He seized her by the upper arms and pivoted her till her arse pressed against the table edge, then lifted her up and on, pushed her back. He shoved her knees apart and stood between them, staring down, greedily drinking in the sight of her hair spilling out around her head and her laboured breaths making her breasts rise and fall and the intoxicating, heavy-lidded want on her face. He felt possessive to an animal degree.

He pinned her upper body with his own and took a minute to gaze, eye to eye, as a knowing smile crept over Rose's face. "Is this your dream?" she whispered.

"Yes," he whispered back. "Except this is better." Then he kissed her till his head spun.

Her mouth was alive under his and could feel the life in her veins and the frenzy of her heart, taste the surge of her emotions. It was playing out exactly like his dream and he felt a thrill of intense gratitude that he was actually getting to live it—the dream had been prophetic after all. He knew he would change some aspects, though—change number one was that his fingers went nowhere near her temples, not yet. He was saving it. A moment like that—the first time—was not for a situation like this.

Although a hard, impetuous fuck on the edge of a kitchen table was certainly not without its merits.

He refused to let their lips part as his fingers dug at her sides to grab the waist of her sweatpants. He found it and pulled them down with one hand while physically lifting her arse with the other, Rose letting loose a muffled squeak into his mouth. Once her sweats were thrown aside he scrabbled at his belt buckle, unbuckling it and opening the fly of his jeans...but only to give himself some relief. He let out a grateful breath when the stiff denim and zip were no longer bearing down on his even-stiffer cock. There...now he could concentrate.

Rose lifted her head to look at him as he stepped back, then knew what was happening when he knelt between her legs. She flopped back with a gasp of anticipation that told the Doctor quite a lot, and the first swipes of his tongue on her made her jolt and let out a yell that would clearly translate to "Hallelujah" in any language.

He mischievously stopped what he was doing. "Like that, eh?"

"Wha?" she panted, having to come back down from another planet and the Doctor fought the urge to laugh. "Yeah. Obviously."

He leaned forward again, slowly. He sensed her tensing, bracing for the jolt of sensation...so he pulled back. "Been wishing for that for a while?" he asked conversationally.

"Oi!" The outrage in her tone meant she was catching on to the game.

"Something wrong?" he smirked, lowering his mouth toward her spread folds again. Her legs were now quivering and he just couldn't help himself. "Why didn't you teach me this when I was John?" he smirked, sitting back. He _was_ genuinely curious.

"AAAUUGH!" she yelled. The Doctor grinned like a maniac. "Why do you think?" she shot back. "I didn't want you to think I'd been a French whore."

"I dunno, mighta moved to France..." he grinned. He gazed down below the dark brown curls and felt his look grow serious and heated. "Anything you'd asked me, I'd've done," he swore thickly. "And something like this..." He leaned down and took a long slow lick that made her shudder. "I'd've been speechless at the privilege."

Rose exhaled on the longest, most appreciative sigh he'd ever heard. "Be speechless now and keep doing that," she said breathlessly.

The tingle he got from that sigh made him want to get down to the business of making her do it again, plus more. "Anything you ask me," he whispered back.

He began to work in earnest and there was no more talk for several minutes, but that didn't mean there wasn't sound. Rose panted and pleaded and hissed out magnificent, filthy swear words and long, low moans. Her reactions had him so hard he had to wrap one hand around his cock, just for the sensation, but he resisted stroking, saving it all up for that first moment he got to feel her, when the sweetest part of her was squeezing him tight and he was saved.

He worked her till she ground mindlessly against his face. Her panting grew harsher and he increased the pressure of his tongue with the utmost attention and care, and she screamed. She screamed and sobbed and thrashed like a wild thing.

When she finally calmed enough he stood, cock in hand and saw her, post-orgasm, sprawled and stupefied and helpless with satisfaction. He felt like a god.

With her on it, he shoved the table against the wall behind it for stability and slid inside to find her sopping. She let loose a short, amazed breath and he had to take a minute: oh God, so good...

He began pumping into her at an increasingly fast pace and heard her start to react. He grabbed her legs and threw them over his shoulders as he shoved himself against her until there was no further he could go.

He began losing himself to the feel of her warm legs against his chest and the slap of their bodies, in the power of being above her and in control and most of all, of knowing she was right here where he could protect her and they were together. He'd nearly given her up. He'd meant to. And now he was an addict binging on the lifesaving drug of her and the thought he'd almost refused it scared him to death.

"You're never going anywhere, d'you hear me?" he panted. "You are never going home. I'll never let you."

"I—I'm going to remind you you said that," stuttered Rose, being jarred against the tabletop.

"You won't have to..." he grunted, "because you're mine." _Because I'd never last if you left_, his brain told him. His head bowed in grief even as sweet sensation thrilled through every part of him. _I wouldn't survive. I wouldn't want to. I—_ He gritted his teeth and redoubled his efforts, slamming into her, using her body and the dizzying pleasure to cleanse him of all the fear. He bent forward, forcing her legs up around her shoulders and he held her wrists above her head with one hand. He wanted control, he wanted command...he wanted to come into her like a bleeding freight train.

He got his wish moments later as blast after blast shot out of him, ruthlessly pulling sheer bliss from his bones. Her soft hands on his cheeks grounded him as he calmed.

He opened his eyes and watched her glow at him.

A lazy grin took over his sated, sweaty face. "Right," he growled. "That's Round One."

* * *

Later, in his bedroom, with the lights low and the shadows sheltering them it was different—_he_ was different. Aggression didn't appeal to him. Here he was dancing around a connection he'd been afraid to let himself dream of since shortly after he met her. A communion he didn't deserve and was too much to hope for, so he'd pretended he didn't do.

He'd started on a tour of her body with kisses to the crown of her head and didn't plan on stopping till he reached her toes. His Time Lord senses were back and alive and screaming heady new information at him. He hadn't stopped to savour it back in the kitchen, but now he did and her whole being was suddenly a brand new bit of home. It was as though someone had brought him a newly-discovered masterpiece by his favourite artist, a lost manuscript written just for him by a beloved long-gone author. He ghosted his lips over her skin, stopping to kiss and lick and nuzzle and savour her scent and aura in a whole new way.

Rose's head was reeling pleasantly at the change of pace, and her heart was singing from the realization she hadn't lost something she'd thought she had.

She hadn't lost John.

The encounter on the kitchen table had been hot and amazing and it had thrilled her to her bones to finally experience The Oncoming Storm side of him in bed...but it had also installed the slightest niggle of worry. She wondered if perhaps he'd never regain his previous gentleness—not that she didn't think the Doctor was capable of gentleness, but she wondered if his special way with her as John had been a product of his persona and the times, a kind of alchemy that couldn't be recreated. But only a short while later and it was all pouring out of him again, and it was alternately making her melt with love and rejoice just as surely as it ever had. She wondered at all the other sides of him she had yet to explore, and a bubble of soft, happy laughter escaped her.

For the Doctor, Rose's personal scent was even more of a drug than it had been previously. The riot of her hormones told him volumes about how aroused she'd been, how deeply sated, her capacity for even more pleasure. With her this close and with his focus so narrowed, he could almost literally feel her love for him as a vibratory frequency that swirled around his face. The tale it all told about how overjoyed she was to be with him...it was a gift he almost couldn't process.

Despite having a hard time focusing—his touch was so exquisite, she kept forgetting to breathe—Rose suddenly became aware of a difference in the Doctor's demeanour, a quiet intensity. "Doctor..." she whispered with an effort, "what is it?"

Of course she knew. He wasn't surprised, only thrilled. The Doctor ran his tongue up the inside of Rose's thigh and his moan matched hers. The rush of chemicals and vibrations made him dizzy and lovesick and amazed, and translated to arousal shooting straight to his groin.

He hadn't answered, so she asked again. Or she meant to, but something was taking her over. She could almost feel her pleasure working on him, then his excitement spilling over onto her in turn, round and round. It was like nothing she'd ever felt before.

All of it soon excited the Doctor so much he had to be atop her, skin on skin. Inside him the urge to complete the connection was overwhelming. "Rose," the Doctor rasped desperately, while he could still form words. "There's one more thing...from my dream...I need to know if you..." It was too much to explain, he had to show her.

She didn't know what he was talking about. The tip of his rigid cock was riding wetly up her inner thigh and she felt a blind, helpless need to get it to its destination. But then she felt his fingers brush her temples and suddenly the world as she knew it ceased to be. Her identity became boundary-less. Suddenly her soul and the Doctor's were sharing the same space and she'd never known such wholeness and then just as suddenly he was gone. "Doctor!" she cried, panicky to have whatever it was return. "Oh God, Doctor, come back! What was that? Don't go!"

"I'm here Rose, I'm here," he gasped. "We're here..." At that, the Doctor made firm contact with her skin, finger pads against temples, and pushed his hips forward and slid into her, and it happened.

He finally, simultaneously sank into Rose in _both_ the ways he'd really, really wanted to.

Rose wailed in relief as everything—seemingly _everything_—merged, but she could only hear herself for a split second before all awareness of the outside world was blasted away by her fall into the infinite, by her fall into him.

Her consciousness jolted with the shock of meeting another.

She'd really never thought about existential emptiness, the idea of an aching hole and fundamental separation from others that exists behind our consciousness, occasionally peeking out to make us drink too much, fight, have affairs.

She never thought about it until the emptiness was slammed full and hence obliterated, and the completeness she felt was a soul-deep sigh of stunning relief that echoed throughout eternity.

They were both at the source where bare ideas and experiences were-free of their usual clothes of sight or sound or words, just knowledge naked and pure in the mind-and she was deluged with what she could only describe as pure Doctorness. She wasn't really _seeing_ it in the traditional sense, per se, but she knew that all around her there was something shining bright as a nova and it was him—all his power, all his knowledge, all his sadness, all his love.

And what the Doctor felt...what he understood...it was staggering.

Everything about Rose was surging recklessly through the Doctor like a tidal wave, and the depth and breadth and power of Rose's love for him...it made the Doctor's body catch its breath, back where he'd left it in another other world. His gratitude and her dazzling aura lit the landscape of their shared space-it had been so, _so _long, and oh, what she _felt_, for _him_...

The glow of Rose's consciousness orbited the Doctor's, drifting close, flashing and sparking wherever they seemed to intersect. Every seeming touch sent the deepest satisfaction and pleasure through the Doctor, the purest sort of communion.

The consciousnesses were merging, edges blurring and blending with every surge of pleasure that sparked through their world. Suddenly Rose felt herself fall deeper, into a space where she saw what she knew were timelines shimmering off into the distance before her and blazing away behind her, like standing in the middle of a highway of intersecting laser beams. She took a mental step into one of the beams and was instantly immersed in a life that wasn't her own, watching a stranger live and die in every way that could happen and another hop into a different light stream caused the same result. Each jump felt like a threat to her sanity but she couldn't stop. Soon she realized that she understood not only what the Doctor saw, but the immensity of what he felt about it, the responsibility he felt for her and every living thing. She suddenly saw what he was risking or likely to suffer by letting her in. She could appreciate it in a whole new way as she felt the Doctor's consciousness near her, as though mentally holding her hand, communing among the pulses of bliss, like heartbeats in the background.

But somehow she knew to steer him—he had blinders to remove and she knew it. She pulled him through timelines that were theirs and found oh so many that were beautiful. There were thousands in which they lived decades in health and joy. There were even some in which Rose overcame mortality. The Doctor had been ignoring what he was afraid to want.

The Doctor's consciousness soaked in Rose's hope and optimism, while also feeling tinges of her fear and potential grief at losing him. He wasn't sure he'd ever met a braver soul.

The heartbeats of pleasure grew stronger.

Their bodies were growing demanding, the building euphoria too overwhelming to ignore.

To Rose, It was as though the Doctor's body was there but wasn't. All the physical things that made her want him still existed and affected her, and yet were only concepts. Somewhere in another lifetime her hands fell to his back and Rose could feel the zing of the electricity jolting through his muscles-it made her hands burn hot and her consciousness thrill. She could see his emotions, flaring bright and brilliant. She felt the surpassingly sweet glide of him. She swore she could taste his thoughts. Every movement of their physical selves sent a new, flashing, echoing bolt of bliss not only through her, but through _everything_.

The electrical impulses firing their movements and producing their physical sensations shot across the scene like Northern lights. The Doctor watched the firestorm produced by Rose's legs clamping hard around his waist. Rose knew the kaleidoscope created when rough fingers stroked over her nipples again and again. Their bodies cooperated by holding a conversation in pure ideas, everything understood by the other at the instant of conception. They were directed by each other's primal wants the second they happened. There was no thought of not doing what the other craved—they were one being and there was no difference between her satisfaction and his. Together they were doubling what it was possible for them to feel by themselves.

The auras were blending and sparking in a frenzy. Cries and gasps were filtering their way into their netherworld. And when the brilliant miasmas finally came together, their universes and the bodies that contained them exploded in a way that made Heaven pale in comparison.

* * *

Rose wasn't sure when the Doctor's fingers finally fell from her temples. She just knew she woke up beneath him, his weight collapsed on her as though he'd never move again. Rose wasn't sure she ever would, either. She was completely drained yet feeling so much more than content or satisfied. She was utterly, totally changed.

The Doctor finally stirred, letting out a long slow breath that ruffled the hair by her ear. "Still with me?" he murmured.

"Are you kidding?" she panted. "I've clearly never been _more _with you."

The Doctor laughed, sounding exhausted.

"So that's how a Time Lord does it?" she asked. "Every time?"

The Doctor smiled and raised himself to his elbows with a little groan. "Well...not exactly." He looked down at her, more peaceful than she'd ever seen him. "I'm going to make a massive understatement and say you find out a lot about someone when you do this..." Rose laughed. "You obviously know exactly how they feel. And if two people aren't in tune they won't necessarily cooperate as well as we did. It doesn't happen like this unless the participants are ideal for each other, halves to each others' wholes..." He closed his eyes and let his forehead rest against Rose's, and his relief was so palpable Rose wondered if there was still a mental connection lingering between them.

"It's not usually like this…" he breathed. "At least for me, it's never been this…perfect. Oh, _Rose..._" he sighed. "I finally touched you everywhere."

* * *

A little while later, spooning in the tangled sheets with the remains of a refrigerator raid scattered about, Rose had regained her energy. The Doctor preferred to focus on touching her, running his fingers over every interesting part, lazily and thoroughly.

"Y'know, s' too bad I couldn't have run away with you, as John," she said thoughtfully, picking up some spare cookie crumbs off the sheets with the pads of her fingers. "That would've been really romantic."

"Yes, because we're dreadfully short on romance around here." The Doctor caught her hand and licked the crumbs off himself, enjoying Rose's slight shiver.

"Stop it. That's just the one thing I did to disappoint you, and it just would have been brilliant to say yes to you and then find ourselves on a midnight train somewhere."

"You're dreaming of _trains_?" The Doctor harrumphed. "Been known to offer a _few_ travel opportunities, me..." He used his newly-moistened fingers to seek out Rose's nipple, circling lightly.

Rose's breath caught quietly, and it was several moments before she continued. "And then we could've got our own compartment, and..." She hummed as he brushed his palm over the nipple instead. "...when we found ourselves alone, I just know you would have been so happy and so..._ravenous_ for me..."

"Again, so very unlike what we have now." He began kissing the place where her neck joined her shoulder, feeling her start to squirm and himself hardening pleasantly.

She was smiling, and gasping a little when she said "It would have been...beautiful to watch you getting your heart's desire."

The Doctor felt said heart soften, even as other parts of him did the opposite. He pulled her leg gently back over his hip, then sent his fingers to spread her lips and give him access to stroke her.

"Then it should be beautiful now," he whispered.

"Oh, it is," she moaned, gasping as he pushed into her.

The Doctor paused a moment, breathing and feeling smug and clever from what he could do to her, yet incredibly lucky at having been saved from his own colossal stupidity. He'd never admit it but he'd clearly been smarter as an ape than he'd ever been in this incarnation.

And Rose had been smart all along.

Rose squirmed again and brought him back to the present. He moved, and his fingers drifted toward her temples, and he could hardly wait to find out what else they could teach each other.

- end -


	17. Alternate Scene, Advanced Education

**Author's note:** So I got to thinking...

In "An Education" I mentioned several times that Rose was holding back from teaching John more "modern" sexual stuff (essentially, anything oral), but that sometimes she really wanted to, and at the end, Nine told her John "would have been speechless at the privilege." Because I often look back and wonder what might have happened if I'd taken a different fork in my story road (and because frankly I've been missing spending time in this universe), I started contemplating: if what Nine said was true, how might things have gone if Rose'd given in? I already know that if I'd included this scene it would have changed every single interaction from then on in and I liked dividing up their sexual exploration and discovery of each other the way I did, but still...woulda been interesting... :)

Therefore, this takes place at some point during John and Rose's first, uninterrupted week of nights together. Hope you like.

* * *

The gift of another night with John.

Rose had never had this much sex in such a concentrated time period. It was amazing and revelatory and…right now she was feeling terribly ungrateful.

John's mouth roamed her chest and neck and face while below his fingers moved determinedly between her slick lips. The fact that he-a man from 1913, for all intents and purposes-had taken to this particular art so quickly and enthusiastically, without ever asking what put the idea in her head, was more than she could have ever expected. Every night his keenness for it made him seek out new tricks, new ways to give her pleasure and hence give him the reaction he loved. It was clearly his drug, and Rose knew she'd been very, very blessed in this regard…

…except tonight, she wanted more.

_God_, she wanted his mouth between her legs. His fingers were doing everything right and yet she still couldn't make it over that last crest and into freefall. She could feel him start to notice and she didn't want him to think any of it was his fault—it only wasn't working because her brain was in the way.

She couldn't help it, she craved the electric, quicksilver feel of his tongue flicking over her, sucking at her. She wanted the thrill of seeing _the Doctor's _face between her thighs, pleasuring her. The higher he brought her with his fingers and lips on her skin, the wilder she was to have it happen. A few minutes later and she was too out of her mind to stop the words.

"John, I need something," she panted. "I want something, so much…"

He pulled back to look at her. "Tell me." There was a heartening gleam of curiosity in his eye.

"I don't know what you'll think of it."

He raised an eyebrow, amused and unconcerned though his curiosity looked piqued. "One way to find out." His fingers kept moving, slower now, relaxed.

Rose bit her lip. "I don't know what you'll think of _me_."

His look softened, becoming infinitely sweet. "I'll think what I always do, that you're beautiful, and that I dearly love pleasing you," he said, leaning in for a gentle kiss. "Tell me what you want."

Rose reluctantly tore herself away from his languidly stroking fingers and sat up, while he watched her expectantly. She searched her brain but just couldn't think of a way to introduce it with words…so she opted for something else—something _else_she'd been dying for. A feline grin spread across her face.

"I think the best way for you to understand would be for me to show you first."

John looked the tiniest bit puzzled—undoubtedly thinking about differences in anatomy—but complied when she gently pushed him to lie down. She took a minute to gaze over his lanky naked body, beautiful as always, her inspection stopping on his stiff penis. Gravity bent it a little toward his stomach and his breaths made it bob gently. She still got a little thrill in her stomach just looking at it-even more so now, with the knowledge of what she was finally about to do.

She straddled his knees and leaned over him. She watched his eyes follow her breasts as they hung down, tracking their movement and their change of shape. She smiled: men were the same in any age. She began lowering herself slowly toward his erection, keeping her eyes on his and giving him plenty of time to watch, wonder, let his look become riveted yet unsure. She looked down and saw his cock twitch, watched the veins straining in excitement, then opened her mouth, fastened her lips around him and slid them all the way down.

John only just managed to strangle back a cry that would have alerted the entire school to what was happening. He had to stifle another, mash it down into a mere muffled groan as she dragged her lips back up, tongue swiping along the underside as she went. "Rose…Rose…" he gasped as she continued bobbing and dragging and licking the length of him. She loved it—loved watching him, loved hearing him, loved making him lose his mind with excitement, loved tasting that part of him that was so private, so not for anyone else and finally unleashing a fantasy she'd had forever.

She tortured him with pleasure for another few minutes while his head thrashed and he struggled to keep his sounds at a manageable level, then released him with a long, slow lick. It didn't seem John could catch his breath. Pride and arousal bloomed in her chest. "Like that, do you?" she asked wickedly.

"How…" John gasped. "…where did you…"

Rose felt a sharp pang of fear, and the potential for shame. "Just…enjoy it, all right?" she asked softly.

John pushed up on his elbows, face flushed and eyes searching, and saw something in her face that made him pause, made him pull back the questioning in his eyes. He flopped back onto the pillow. "I'd heard talk of something like that, usually mentioning the French…and sometimes thought of as a perversion…"

Rose's stomach tightened in earnest then. "What do you think now?" she asked.

"If it is one, I don't care," John confessed in astonishment.

Rose burst out laughing, covering her mouth with her hands. John looked over and smiled weakly and Rose flooded with relief and affection.

His smile dimmed a moment later, becoming one of puzzlement and something like unease. "You want me to do something like that to you?"

She nodded, unable to stay coy or hold back her eagerness. "Yes, please."

He watched her as if trying to discover something. She could see interest and arousal warring with the other feelings on his face…and winning. "You want me to see your…your femininity that closely…_taste _it?" She nodded. His pupils dilated sharply; his eyes gained a smolder that could easily be set ablaze. He was already rising and moving toward her. "That you would ask me for something so…intimate…"

"I trust you. More than anyone," Rose could say with utter honesty.

He put himself between her knees, spread her thighs and leant down to look closely at what was revealed. He breathed out and the feel of it sent a thrill skittering down her spine. "So delicate…" he murmured, running his fingers softly over her. "This may be my favorite place on Earth," he remarked, his grin gone crooked. He kept tracing the edges of her inner lips; she shivered and squirmed. His eyes flicked to hers and he smiled, proud as always. He slithered down to lay on his stomach, his face so close, his eyes growing more intense all the time. "What do I do?"

"All the things you do with your fingers…" she panted, her body on fire with anticipation. "All the places you rub and touch me…do the same with your tongue."

He paused a moment, then gave her a slow, experimental lick. Rose's hips nearly flew off the bed.

"Oh, God, John!" she cried, biting her lip to keep in the shrieks she wanted to let loose, the word "Doctor" so poised on her tongue she barely held it back.

"Like that, do you?" he smirked.

Rose couldn't answer him—not when he resumed and began translating his skills from fingers to mouth so breathtakingly well Rose could barely retain her sanity. Truth was it had never really taken much to make her come this way—just the barest amount of skill and she'd get what she needed. John was a natural, and between that and the anticipation that had built and the sight of his head between her thighs...it all combined to make her spasm well before she expected it. She babbled helplessly and sobbed as the pleasure flooded her groin and limbs, over and over again. She could never go without him after this, nothing and no one else would ever be good enough.

When he'd given her every last spasm he could, John climbed atop her to put himself inside, but Rose pushed him up, reversed their positions and took him back into her mouth. A cry burst out of him and his hands slid restlessly into her hair. Rose held nothing back and within minutes he was thrusting and choking back sounds, starting to warn her off: "Rose, I—you should—oh, oh, OH—"

Rose almost came again herself with the sound of him unhinged and moaning, the feel of him jerking uncontrollably, the taste of his come spurting onto the back of her tongue. When he quieted she pulled back slowly, lips tight, making sure to get it all.

He lay heaving. "Astonishing…"

Rose collapsed back, feeling wonderfully sated and superhero powerful at having reduced him to custard…until his head lolled to face her with eyes that wanted answers. "How could any of this _possibly _be part of your past experience?"

Rose's stomach plummeted till she feared she'd need to visit the basement to retrieve it. She'd gone too far; she'd let herself get carried away and crossed a line. Demonstrating fellatio was one thing—_swallowing _was another. She'd behaved like a slag and ruined everything.

"I shouldn't have brought it up," she whispered, starting to tremble, turning to get up from the bed. John overcame his languor to bolt up and catch her wrist.

"Rose, please…I'm not judging you, sincerely. You know this. I've already told you—and _shown _you—you don't need to play the virgin for me." Rose paused: he was right. She relaxed a bit, no longer pulling to leave.

"But do credit me with having eyes, and a brain attached to them," he continued carefully. She wanted to look at him but just couldn't; her heart was pounding so fast. "It's not just this, Rose, I've…I've tried not to intrude with questions about your home or your past, since you're usually reluctant to talk about it but sometimes, like tonight…the things you do belie the things you've said."

Rose tried to steady her breathing, lest it give even more away. Oh God, he was going to guess, figure out something was wrong with her, ask her things she couldn't tell him and all because she wanted to get off via her preferred method. She could smack herself.

"You're just…so young," he continued, "and yet sometimes it's like you've lived some whole other life I've never heard of." Rose gave a quiet snuff of air, a reaction that seemed to confirm for John that he was on the right track, made him even keener for answers. When she didn't reply he cast his eyes about the room as if physically looking for another tack. "Who was this…man of yours?" he asked finally.

Rose sighed wearily. "No one special." _Actually he's a combination of two ordinary prats from 70 years in the future where everybody behaves the way we just did and it's no big deal._

John waited for more and looked frustrated when it didn't come. After a moment he sighed and gave a gentle tug on her wrist. "Come to bed," he entreated quietly. "I couldn't bear it if you left."

Rose finally turned and looked at his plaintive face, as dear and handsome and beloved as always. "I only suggested those things because I thought you wouldn't mind," she defended meekly.

John surprised her with a short, amazed laugh. "I beg your pardon, did I give you any indication that I _minded_ those activities?" Rose giggled, remembering his reactions. He grinned for the first time since they'd started talking, pulled her onto the bed and rolled her into an embrace. "I thought I'd made it _abundantly _clear I was in favor of all the proceedings." Rose nodded and hid her giggling in his chest; she was finally starting to relax.

He rolled her over again and they came to rest facing each other. "How could I ever mind you making us both feel like that, or showing me new ways to be intimate with you?" he asked with a hand in her hair, but the unsettled expression returned. "You do understand, though, don't you? You've told me so little, I can't help but have questions."

"I promise someday, there'll be answers." Rose willed herself not to think of the future, and her eyes not to fill.

"But why not now?" he pressed. "You said you trusted me more than anyone."

"I do, I meant it," she swore, fingers resting on his sharp cheekbones, his stubble rasping gently on the heels of her hands.

His thumbs stroked the apples of her cheeks as he searched her face so earnestly Rose could barely keep the tears at bay. "You're all I think about, Rose," he confessed softly, his eyes filled with a helpless devotion. "I just want as much of you as there is to have."

Her lip trembled and she threw herself into his arms, holding her to him as tightly as she could manage. "Someday, I'll let you ask me anything you want to, and I'll answer," she said. "And if you'll still have me afterward, I'll still be yours."

He rubbed her back and gave a soft cluck of disbelief. "Oh, Rose…" he chided quietly.

Rose just hung on, and thought of how good it felt, for now.


	18. Alt Alt Scene, Advanced Education Remix

**AN**: A while ago, I wrote "Advanced Education", an alternate scene for my fic "An Education". Not a missing scene, an alternate scene - a way I could have taken things but didn't.

Lots of people said nice things, but **zazie11** over at LJ was very keen for me to write the scene again but from Nine!Smith's POV. So I did. Now we have an _alternate _alternate scene. A few more rounds of this and we're going to invert the space-time continuum.

**What you should know: **In "An Education" I mentioned several times that Rose was holding back from teaching Nine!John more "modern" sexual stuff (essentially, anything oral). But that sometimes she really wanted to, and at the end, Nine told her John would have loved it if she had. But would things really have gone smoothly? Here's what could have happened, had I decided to take that left turn (at Albuquerque).

* * *

The gift of another night together.

John was losing himself in his new favorite activity: filling his senses with Rose Tyler.

She lay in his bed, panting as he dragged his open lips softly over her skin: fragrant, cool and clammy as her sweat tried to soothe the heat underneath. He could actually see the throb of her heart, faintly but visibly pulsing against the skin of her chest, its gentle-looking thump belying the frenzy it would have to attain for it to appear. Compulsively he laved it with his tongue, fancying he could taste the life there. His erection throbbed with a beautiful pain-her body was on fire, all because of him.

There wasn't an inch of her skin he didn't want to kiss, caress, cover with goosebumps. But the real thrill was in moving his fingers between the lips of her sex, touching her in ways that made her shiver and moan, clutch at him and call for him—causing her so much pleasure that she lost all sense in his arms, did so for his eyes only, fell apart and trusted only him to care for the pieces.

John would never have believed being with a woman could be like this. Granted, it had never exactly been a _chore_ previously (if he recalled correctly; when he searched his memories he found his past had abruptly become rather fuzzy) but he'd never met a woman with Rose's enthusiasm for it, or her enthusiasm for him and his body and the things he did. He'd never met a woman who wanted to touch and explore him as much as he did her, who seemed so comfortable with his body and knew how to give it pleasure, or was as comfortable sharing her own. He'd never met a woman who reached a climax like he did—for clearly, that was what she did—much less one open enough to teach him how to do it for her.

And none of it made any sense.

It was easy to use the ecstasy of their coupling or the quiet joy of her presence to push down this knowledge, but those things never erased it. A mere girl with this kind of self-awareness, this kind of...what had to be experience...well, it would be remarkable in a woman half again her age. In her it was nearly alarming, an anomaly with no explanation.

And he could also no more resist it than he could live without a heartbeat.

She always challenged him, and when she did so in bed it excited him fiercely, riveted his imagination. Every new touch she suggested, every new want she expressed was a chance for him to explore uncharted sides of not only her but himself. The tightrope walk of her desires and where they led was a powerfully addictive thrill. He wanted her more than he wanted his next breath.

As he continued his erotic assault on her body John began to sense something: Rose seemed frustrated. The idea that he was failing her sent a skittery, unpleasant adrenaline through him but he tried to ignore it. Something was thwarting her pleasure, which meant he had to know what it was.

"John, I need something," Rose pleaded. "I want something, so much…"

He pulled back, grinning that he'd got his wish so quickly and that a new desire was to be revealed. "Tell me," he urged.

Her eyes, uncharacteristically, wouldn't meet his. "I don't know what you'll think of it."

John smirked gently at her sudden shyness. "One way to find out." He slowed his fingers' movements to keep her on the edge. Sometimes when he did that she would drift off as she talked, unable to keep her thoughts straight with the tide of pleasure threatening to carry her away. He loved watching it.

Rose finally looked him in the eye. "I don't know what you'll think of _me_."

Her suddenly vulnerability pretty much ensured he would agree to whatever she asked. "I'll think what I always do," he told her, leaning toward her lips, "that you're beautiful, and that I dearly love pleasing you." His lips touched hers softly, giving him a quiet rush of comfort. "Tell me what you want."

Rose sat up. John watched as she appeared to puzzle something out. He watched until the answer apparently came to her and caused a sinful, crooked smile to tilt her lips.

"I think the best way for you to understand would be for me to show you first," she said.

John was mildly puzzled but reserved judgment as her small hands pushed him to lie down. He watched her eyes drink him in for a long moment and felt a now-familiar amazement; he'd never know what she saw in him than put such a look in her eye. He was just grateful she saw something, that she miraculously wanted him as much as he did her.

His thoughts occupied him long enough that he missed a few seconds of what she'd been doing. He found her straddling his knees and leaning downward so that her breasts dangled in a fascinating way. They took his gaze hostage before he even realized it; he caught Rose smiling at his reaction.

Rose's smile was lowering further, along with the rest of Rose. What was she about? She was looking at his bobbing erection, inexplicably bringing her _mouth_ toward...

Rose's lips sealed around him and she slid them tightly all the way down his shaft. Her hollowed cheeks provided pressure and her tongue friction till he was buried in her mouth nearly to the hilt.

The feeling and the sight caused the fiercest pleasure he'd ever felt in his life.

A shocked yell was on its way to escaping when at the last minute he choked it back, muffling it to the mangled, helpless noise of a man having his mind shattered with sensation and surprise. He had only just got himself under control when she reversed direction and dragged back up, her tongue swishing along the underside of him in a way that filled his lungs with another shout, again caught just in time.

He compulsively sputtered her name. She began to bob up and down smoothly and quickly, her tongue and puckered mouth working him. He couldn't stop moaning. The euphoria siphoned brain power away from wondering how in God's name she knew about this.

After several glorious minutes, cool air hit his wet cock and he realized with a gasp that she'd released him. He lay there with his mind protesting her stopping, his body tingling, lungs laboring.

"Like that, do you?" came Rose's voice, soft and smug.

John's brain had become as agitated as his body, whirling with the usual questions, only louder: _Who is this person to whom I've already given my entire heart? What isn't she telling me? What unknown fate might befall me if I don't find out?_"How…" John gasped. "…where did you…"

When Rose's voice sounded again it had dropped to a near-whisper. "Just…enjoy it, all right?"

John pushed up to look at her. He couldn't hold his questions back forever and in fact didn't want to…but then, as always, he saw her face.

It held the same things that always kept him from asking about her past: fear, a strange shame, skittish anxiety, a sense that she'd bolt if he did do. Once again he wasn't brave enough to chance it. He flopped back down on the pillow and chose just to let his mind and body reel from what he'd felt. "I'd heard talk of something like that, usually mentioning the French," he covered, since he had done, after all. Some of his colleagues were none too discreet with tales of their supposed conquests, and the stories got especially colorful when they returned from trips abroad. Though truth be told, not all his colleagues were impressed, when the storytellers left the room. "…sometimes thought of as a perversion…" he added.

"What do you think now?" she asked tensely.

His honest, unguarded answer absolved her of everything. "If it is one, I don't care!"

Rose's laughter burst out and tumbled over him. He rolled his head so he could see her covering her mouth with her hands, child-like, finally dropping them to beam at him. She looked utterly relieved, and John marveled at how many aspects could exist in her at once.

Then he remembered the request that had begun this exercise, and the pure lightness of the moment dwindled. "You want me to do something like that to you?"

Her focus sharpened instantly, and his stomach flipped as she squirmed where she sat. "Yes, please," she begged softly.

It would surely only lead to more unanswered questions, more discomfort from hiding his misgivings. But _oh_, to do something to her she was that eager for. Then the physicality of what she was suggesting hit him and he found his body going to her as though it had decided without him. "You want me to see your…your femininity that closely…taste it?" When she nodded he felt instantly feral, as though he was being asked to know her and claim her in a very elemental way. It felt like something that wouldn't be asked of or allowed of anyone but her undisputed mate.

"That you would ask me for something so…intimate…" he nearly growled.

"I trust you. More than anyone," Rose said, and that was the affirmation that sealed it.

Between her knees now, spreading her thighs proprietarily—the scent that often lingered on his fingers now struck him and between that and the wetness he could see trickling from her, he knew she was as aroused as he'd ever known her to be. Down on his elbows and stomach to inspect this new frontier. Absently he breathed out onto her and she shivered; his own excitement became momentary torture. Her vivid reaction to that one tiny touch made him imagine her probable reactions to even more contact. He suddenly couldn't remember what his hesitation toward doing this was about.

He became absorbed, skating his fingers lightly over the skin, the fluted lips inside. "So delicate…" he pronounced softly. This was the seat of so much of his pleasure, directly and indirectly, and here in this position he was able to partake of it as intensely as he ever had. "This may be my favorite place on Earth," he summed up, a little wickedly. A glance up her body found Rose just staring at him, pupils huge.

He kept stroking her carefully, using his fingers to find the places that had become familiar to his touch, letting his fingers teach his eyes. He spread some of her moisture over the fragile pink skin and felt her jump and whimper. He couldn't wait to start anymore, and clearly neither could she. "What do I do?"

"All the things you do with your fingers…" she panted, unable to keep still. "All the places you rub and touch me…do the same with your tongue."

That seemed simple enough.

He often began by stroking her in a very general way, so he translated that to a long, slow lick, bottom to top. Her body jolted hard. "Oh, God, John!"

"Like that, do you?" he smirked. He took her inability to answer as a very gratifying yes.

He turned back to his new task, closed his eyes and took in the strange new flavor and the slippery feel under his tongue. This was still quite an anti-intuitive thing to do, really, but she'd been very smart, letting him experience it first. Now he knew what it felt like to be on the receiving end, it was worth any adjustment period to give her the same feeling, to be the man who pleased her like no one else. The change of angle made it a bit harder to find what he was looking for, but once he did he zeroed in on it and licked and sucked and worried that place in every way he could think of. And the reactions she was having as a result...he had no means to express the feelings they gave him.

Soon she'd begun bucking, grinding herself against his lips and chin. His determination to make her insensible with pleasure had doubled, even though his tongue and jaw were becoming exhausted (he'd have to devise some techniques to keep from tiring out, in future). She was reaching her climax and he was at its epicenter and it was arousing beyond belief. He added the movement of his head and she broke, moaning ecstatic nonsense. He could never go without those sounds and the experience of causing her to make them after this, nothing and no one else would ever be good enough.

The instant she started to calm he was atop her, hand fumbling to guide himself to her now-sopping opening...till suddenly he found himself pushed up and then down, his back hitting the mattress and Rose's warm mouth clamping over him yet again.

Immediately he was drowning in exquisite sensation, the sweet slick slide of her cheeks and tongue, the whole act seeming so utterly forbidden and sinful, which had to be why it was so so good. Looking down his body she was just an arched back, a lovely behind thrust upward and a bowed head of wild blonde hair. His fingers slipped into that hair, enticed by yet another part of her that was untamed.

This wasn't the teasing demonstration of before - this time she sucked _hard_ and moved fast and his climax was speeding to the fore. She'd had her peak in his mouth, was he-he moaned instantly at the very idea-was he going to have his in hers? Dear lord, he couldn't think of a more illicit thrill, couldn't keep his hips from thrusting...except it ought to be her choice, he should...he could hardly talk...

"Rose, I'm going to–I'm close–you should–" She didn't slow down. She heard him, he knew, but she wasn't slowing down. In fact he was sure his warning had made her work harder which meant she would deliberately let him spend in her mouth and that was the END of him the minute he thought it. "Oh, oh, OH–"

Spasm after delicious spasm shot hot liquid out of him and into her. Her lips stayed tight around him and dragged up carefully - none of it left her mouth. John nearly swooned again watching her.

"Astonishing…" he gasped.

She fell bonelessly onto her back, looking just as sated as he, and his head rolled to face her. He had no words to tell her how fantastic she'd just made him feel...which may have been why other words in his head left him utterly without warning or conscious thought: "How could _any_ of this possibly be part of your past experience?"

He watched Rose go pale and horrified, knew it would happen and determined they would get through it. The huge relief he felt at having finally voiced his thoughts told him he'd done the right thing.

"I shouldn't have brought it up," she was whispering, heading for the edge of the bed. He reached out and caught her wrist.

"Rose, please…I'm not judging you, sincerely. You know this." And she did know—she had to do. He didn't know exactly why, but the typical male predjudices of the period meant nothing to him. He wanted nothing less than Rose as a partner in intimacy, for them both to share whatever it was they really were and really wanted. "I've already told you–and _shown_ you," he emphasized, "you don't need to play the virgin for me."

He felt Rose relax, his words apparently sinking in. But now he'd finally brought up the subject he had to keep going.

"But do credit me with having eyes, and a brain attached to them," he continued carefully. She kept her face turned away, and he tried not to panic that she'd run and never return. "It's not just this, Rose, I've…I've tried not to intrude with questions about your home or your past, since you're usually reluctant to talk about it but sometimes, like tonight…the things you do belie the things you've said."

Rose seemed even more unnerved somehow. What could her past be that it scared her so to tell him? It couldn't be that she'd had to live on the street, sell herself...a girl like that could never have retained the radiance, sweetness and empathy she carried, her capacity to..._love_, he thought, aching. She didn't seem damaged, just...mysteriously hiding something she clearly felt she had to carry alone.

"You're just…so young," he continued, almost compulsively, "and yet sometimes it's like you've lived some whole other life I've never heard of." Rose snuffed quietly, a cynical little noise. There was an entire story in that puff of air and John ardently wanted to know it. He waited to see if it meant she was on the verge of unburdening herself, but a few moments later it was clear she wasn't and John's heart sank in frustration. He cast his eyes about the room as he considered what to say next. Maybe the other lover she'd mentioned was the key. "Who was this…man of yours?" he asked. He was surprised to find he felt so proprietary now, after a mere few nights being her lover himself, that the mention of another man made his throat constrict unpleasantly.

Rose looked weary and persecuted. "No one special," she sighed. He was trying to open her up, chisel the right crack in her protective dam to let the flood waters burst through, but it seemed nothing he said made her feel she could share her burden.

After a moment John decided he couldn't push anymore just then. He didn't want to be holding her wrist any longer, testament to how she'd been fleeing — he wanted her securely in his bed and his embrace where she belonged. "Come to bed. I couldn't bear it if you left," he confessed.

Rose finally turned her face to him, the fondness in her gaze making him feel lighter. "I only suggested those things because I thought you wouldn't mind," she said meekly.

John barked out a laugh at what her statement suggested: that he was put out by blinding pleasure and actions on her part that aroused him beyond measure. "I beg your pardon, did I give you any indication that I _minded_ those activities?" Rose giggled, and John relaxed immensely. Impulsively he grabbed her and pulled her to the bed, rolling over to wrap himself around her. "I thought I'd made it abundantly clear I was in favor of all the proceedings," he continued. She hid her face and giggled into his chest, and he closed his eyes and smiled.

He settled them facing each other. "How could I ever mind you making us both feel like that, or showing me new ways to be intimate with you?" She smiled at him gratefully, and he cursed his unsettled feeling as it returned. "You do understand, though, don't you?" he felt impelled to say. "You've told me so little, I can't help but have questions."

"I promise someday, there'll be answers." Rose swore quietly.

It was as close as he'd come to her confiding in him and suddenly his urge to know flared. "But why not now?" he pressed impulsively. "You said you trusted me more than anyone."

"I do, I meant it," she swore, hands stroking his cheeks.

Suddenly he had to make her understand. "You're all I think about, Rose," he told her, caressing her face, his heart spilling out of him and into the sweet, soft devotion he saw in her eyes. "I just want as much of you as there is to have."

She embraced him suddenly and tightly; he closed his eyes and clutched her. "Someday, I'll let you ask me anything you want to, and I'll answer," she said, voice unsteady. "And if you'll still have me afterward, I'll still be yours."

His heart clenched to hear her say such a thing. He rubbed her back. "Oh, Rose…"

In a way it didn't matter what her secret was. He already knew he was too fiercely in love not to follow her through anything, as long as she'd let him.


End file.
